


Knockout

by Oliviet



Category: Veronica Mars (TV)
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Not Pictured, TW: Blood, lv au week 2020, tw: Cassidy's suicide, tw: mention of rape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-27
Updated: 2020-08-30
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:46:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 16
Words: 54,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23343436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oliviet/pseuds/Oliviet
Summary: AU where Veronica gets shot on the roof at the end of "Not Pictured." Follows Logan and Veronica's journey of healing over the course of the summer before starting at Hearst in the fall.Part of LV AU Week 2020. Day 6: Hurt/Comfort.
Relationships: Logan Echolls/Veronica Mars
Comments: 240
Kudos: 340
Collections: LV AU WEEK 2020





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Parts of this may not be medically accurate, but my only medical training comes from Grey’s Anatomy and House episodes so if anything seems off, let’s let TV magic do its thing medically here too.

He’s raiding the minibar, trying once again to push thoughts of _her_ out of his head, when he gets a forwarded text from an unknown number.

_Meet me on the roof now._

He stares at it, confused, almost wondering if it’s some sort of trap, but trap for what he’s not entirely sure. Maybe it’s a prank? Or a wrong number? Does he even bother going up to the roof to find out what’s going on? It’s honestly probably nothing at all. But what if it isn’t?

Logan closes the door to the mini fridge and stares up at the ceiling. He has no idea what to expect heading up there. Aaron is staying here now after all. And he certainly wants to do everything in his power to avoid him at all costs.

But Veronica had been trying to tell him something earlier, he was sure of it. She seemed panicked and in a rush and clammed up so fast the moment Dick stepped into earshot. Could this be about that? Had she forwarded him the text?

Now, he feels absolutely compelled to go up to the roof and investigate. Thinking of his father and Veronica in one stream of thought has him itching with some primal need to protect her. She’d accused Aaron of killing Lilly, and while the court may have let him off, Logan was more aware than anyone the damage that could be done by getting on his father’s bad side. There was no way in hell he was going to let that son-of-a-bitch hurt her. 

Logan leaves his room in a rush, shoving his room key into his back pocket as he seeks out the door on his floor with roof access. He can hear shouting as he ascends the set of stairs and he starts taking them two at a time once he hears a woman screaming.

“I swear to God,” he mutters to himself, clenching his fists, ready to deck whoever he needs to in order to stop whatever’s happening up here.

But he freezes when the scene on the rooftop comes into view. Aaron is nowhere in sight, but _Beaver_ is pointing a gun at a very scared and upset Veronica.

“You know Aaron Echolls is staying here,” Beaver starts, staring down at her where she cowers at his feet, holding her left arm like it’s in pain. “What do you want to bet I can get him convicted for the death of this teenage girl?”

Logan finds his voice after that, shouting “No!”

Beaver turns at the sound and shoots at Logan, but the bullet misses, hitting an air duct at his side. He ducks out of instinct, before running to hide behind a skylight before Beaver can improve his aim. He takes another shot at Logan, but misses again as Veronica pulls herself up and tackles him to the ground, trying to wrestle the gun out of his grasp. He pushes her off of him, momentarily forgetting about Logan and training the gun back on her. Logan makes a move from out behind the skylight, poised to tackle Beaver himself, when he hears him fire another shot.

He feels like his heart stops when he hears the strangled gasp of breath from Veronica. She’s been shot. Right in the chest. Right near her heart.

_God, oh God, no, no, no, no, no._

Logan rushes toward her, the thought not even registering in his mind that Beaver could shoot him too. He has to do something; he has to save her. She can’t die on him too. Not like this, especially not like this.

He vaguely remembers something about needing to apply pressure to open wounds like this, so he presses both of his hands against the wound, murmuring nonsense to her, trying to keep her awake.

“It’s okay, you’re okay, we’re going to get you help, stay with me, Veronica, stay with me.”

She opens her mouth like she’s trying to say something, like she wants to speak, but no words come out.

“Stay with me,” he says again, more desperate this time, tears forming in his eyes and at the back of his throat. “I love you, Veronica, please. Fight for it.”

She looks him right in the eyes, and that’s when he sees it happen. He watches in horror as the light leaves her eyes before they slip closed and she falls into unconsciousness.

“Veronica, no! No, no, no, come back. Don’t do this, Veronica, please.”

He looks over his shoulder, desperately searching for help even though he knows the only other person up here is the guy who shot her. He finds Beaver standing on the edge of the roof, staring down into the traffic below.

“Beaver, don’t!” he chokes out.

“My name is Cassidy!”

Logan tries to take a deep breath, tries to focus on something else besides the warmth of Veronica’s blood spilling out over his fingers.

“Cassidy, don’t do it,” he rephrases.

“Oh yeah? Why not? Give me one reason not to.”

He can’t think of any. Not with Veronica bleeding out beneath him because of whatever the hell beef _Cassidy_ had with her.

“That’s what I thought,” Cassidy mumbles, making a move to shift his weight over the edge.

“Wait!” Logan calls out, momentarily stopping him again. “I need you to call 911. My hands –”

He trails off, staring at the crimson puddle slowly forming on the rooftop beneath her. He hadn’t realized one person, especially one as small as Veronica, contained this much blood. There’s so much of it. And his hands certainly aren’t doing a damn thing to stop it. 

Cassidy doesn’t respond, simply staring back at him with a glazed expression on his face.

“At least do something useful with your life first,” Logan grits out. “Help right this wrong you created.”

He shakes his head in response, looking back out over the edge and stepping off. Logan curses, wincing in anticipation of whatever noise a body makes when it connects with the pavement. He hears a car horn instead and instant chatter from the crowd of bystanders below. His eyes scan the rooftop in desperation, cursing again for leaving his own phone in his hotel room. He finds her phone lying a few feet away. He looks down at her hopelessly, wondering if the pressure he’s applying to her wound is even helping her.

There’s so much blood, more and more of it just everywhere. He needs to make the call. No one’s going to find them up here with all of that commotion going on below. He looks down at her again, before pushing himself to his feet with a hiccupping sob and running toward her cell phone. He dials 911 as he rushes back to her, using his free hand to try and still add pressure to the wound with any strength he has left.

The paramedics arrive in a blur. He gets pushed off to the side as they attend to her, doing whatever they can to keep her alive and into surgery. They let him join them in the ambulance. One of the paramedics gently asks him if he’s bleeding anywhere and it’s only then that he looks down and notices just how much of her blood is on him. The sight makes his stomach churn and suddenly the same paramedic is shoving a bucket under his chin for him to vomit into.

This can’t be happening. None of this is real. It was some twisted nightmare he was sure of it. Why would Cassidy Casablancas want to shoot Veronica Mars? What had she been trying to tell him before Dick showed up? What did she _know_?

He gets left in the waiting room as they rush her into surgery. What does he do with himself now? He should call people. _Her people._ But he doesn’t have her dad’s number and she’d mentioned Wallace was off trying to hunt down Jackie in Paris or something and _she_ had been the one looking for Mac earlier. Then he realizes the phone still clutched in his hand is hers. He _does_ have her dad’s number.

Logan quickly finds it in her contacts, chewing his lower lip as it rings. How does he explain this? He watched it happen and he’s still not even sure what happened. The call goes to voicemail and he curses while he listens to the message. This is not the sort of thing you leave on a voicemail. This is not the sort of thing you want to have to tell a person period.

The tone sounds in his ear and he takes a deep breath, trying to settle his nerves. “Hi, Mr. Mars, it’s Logan. Logan Echolls. You knew that, how many Logans do you know? Ahem. Um. Look if you could just give me a call back on Veronica’s phone when you get this. She – there was – she’s in the hospital. I don’t know anything, we just got here, umm please just call me back or get here, she could use you I’m sure. It – uh – it’s not good.”

He starts pacing back and forth in the waiting room not knowing what else to do with himself. He thinks briefly that he should call someone for himself, but who the hell is he supposed to call? His murderer of a father? His best friend whose brother just killed himself after shooting his ex-girlfriend? Kendall? He shakes his head at that last thought, nearly laughing to himself at just the concept.

God, he really can’t lose Veronica, he really doesn’t have anyone else.

What he thinks is about 10 minutes later, Veronica’s phone starts ringing in his hand, the word “Dad” lighting up the screen.

_Shit._

“Hello?” he answers tentatively.

“Logan, what the hell?” Keith’s voice booms over the other line. “What’s going on? You can’t just leave a message like that.”

“I – she –” Logan stammers, trying to find the words. “She’s been shot.”

“She’s been shot?” Keith echoes, his voice going up an octave. “Who? How?”

“Uh Beaver – Cassidy Casablanacs. He shot her. I don’t know why.”

“Has he made any type of confession yet?”

“Well no – he uh – he committed suicide after he shot her. I really don’t know anything, Mr. Mars, I’m sorry.”

There’s a beat of silence on the other line. Logan watches as a doctor approaches the couple sitting off to his right. He watches them crumple as they learn whoever they’re waiting on didn’t make it.

_Please don’t let him be next._

“Where was she shot?” Keith’s voice filters back through, quieter this time.

“In the chest. I did everything I could to try and stop the bleeding but there was just so much of it.”

Another beat of silence. “It’ll probably be another couple of hours before I can get there.”

“I’ll try and keep you updated. If they can tell me anything. Since I’m not family.”

“Do what you have to. Tell them you’re her brother or cousin or something. Just get them to tell you what’s going on.”

Logan nods, exchanging a sympathetic glance with the doctor as she walks back through the ER doors. “Yeah, okay.”

Keith is quiet again and Logan struggles to figure out what else he could possibly say. “I tried to stop him,” he offers weakly. “I wasn’t fast enough.”

He hears Keith expel a long breath. “It’s not your fault, Logan. You tried to stop the bleeding. You got her to the hospital. You helped her.”

“What if it wasn’t enough?” he asks so quietly he’s not even sure if Keith could hear him.

“She’s a fighter, we both know that. She’ll pull through.”

He isn’t sure if Keith is saying that for his benefit or for his own. Probably for both of them. As helpless as Logan feels right now, he can only imagine how much worse it is for Keith. He’s still hours away and so much can happen in that time frame. All he can do is wait. All either of them can do is wait.

Once he hangs up the phone, he’s not entirely sure how much time passes. All he’s aware of is the numbness that threatens to seep back in and take up its previous residence. After Lilly died. After his mom died. Maybe he’s cursed. The women he loves always end up dying on him.

_Not her though, please not her._

He’s vaguely aware of a nurse suggesting he go clean the blood off of him. _Her_ blood. He’s only half with it as he watches the brownish red color swirl down the drain with the water and off of his skin. It’s everywhere. On his shirt, under his nails, there’s even a smudge of it on his chin. He takes the clean white t-shirt she offers him, telling her just to dispose of his old one with the biohazard waste. Even if he can manage to get the blood out of it, he doesn’t want the reminder. He need only look at it to remember the stains that had once been there.

Logan’s back in the waiting room now, picking at his thumbnail where a small spot of blood refused to wash off. Another doctor steps out into the waiting room, a man this time, and the handful of people waiting in there look up at him with bated breath. He reads Veronica’s name off of his chart, and Logan stands shakily to his feet.

“Over here,” he says, his voice not even sounding like his own to his own ears.

“Family for Veronica Mars?” the doctor repeats.

Logan nods. He’ll be her family. She’s his anyway. Even if she doesn’t realize it.

“I’m Dr. Burke, head of cardiothoracic surgery here. I operated on your…I’m sorry, what was your relation again?”

“Sister,” Logan blurts out, remembering what Keith told him. Get them to talk to him, whatever it takes. Even if it feels so, so wrong to think of Veronica as his sister. “She’s my sister.”

Burke nods. “She lost a lot of blood and the bullet grazed her left ventricle. We were able to repair the damage, but she went into cardiac arrest during surgery.”

Logan cuts him off, feeling like his own heart is beating right out of his chest. “Her heart stopped? That’s what that means, right? Is it working again now? Is she alive?”

“Yes,” Burke nods again, giving him a small smile. “Her heart did stop, but we were able to get it beating on its own again. We still need to continue to monitor her closely, but they’re taking her up to recovery now.”

“So, she’s okay?” he chokes out. “She’s not going to die?”

There’s that same sympathetic smile again. “We’re still monitoring her condition, but she’s stable and breathing on her own.”

Logan buries his face in his hands, relief attempting to blossom in his chest and push away the numbness. “Can I see her?”

He nods. “A nurse will come bring you to her.”

He sits back up, resting his head against the wall behind him. “Thank you. Thank you for saving her life.”

Logan dials Keith’s number again as soon as Burke turns to walk away. He can hear the relief in the other man’s voice when he tells him the news. Keith sounds like he’s on the verge of crying, and Logan can’t blame him because so is he. A few minutes later, a nurse appears at his side offering to take him up to see Veronica.

The first thing he notices when he steps into her room are all of the wires and tubes connected to her. The second thing he notices is how pale her skin is. His breath catches in his throat and he has to remind himself that she’s okay.

_Veronica didn’t die today. You didn’t lose her. She’s right here._

He pulls a chair up to her bedside, gently taking her hand in his as he sits down. He can feel the exhaustion settling in as he sits with her. It’s late, nearly 2 AM, and it’s been a hell of a long day. Logan pillows his head on his arms by her side, letting himself drift off and hoping there’s enough numbness left in him to keep the nightmares away for at least one night.

* * *

She wakes in the darkness, the world around her nearly pitch black. Soft light creeps in under her door from the hall, but doesn’t stretch nearly far enough toward her bed. To her left red lights blink on a machine. Red. The color of blood. While the red of the lights is brighter than the darkness of blood itself, she still gets stuck on the concept of it.

The blood had been on his hands. Her blood. Logan’s hands.

Cassidy Casablancas had shot her. After she’d called him out on being responsible for the bus crash. After he admitted to raping her. After he blew up an airplane her father had been on.

Everything hurts.

Her thoughts are being torn in several different directions and she’s not sure if they are what woke her up or if it’s the pain that blossoms from her chest. She wants to know what happened on that roof between Cassidy and Logan after she passed out. She wants to lay here and ponder the significance of nearly dying at the hand of the same man who had killed her father. She wants to know why Logan had taken it upon himself to try and stop her bleeding with his bare hands. Okay, so maybe she _does_ know the answer to that one.

She wonders who’s supposed to take care of her now.

Veronica presses her head harder against her pillow, staring up at the dark ceiling save for the blinking light of the smoke detector. Also red. Sleep won’t come easy for the rest of the night. She fears it might not ever again.

The pain in her chest is throbbing and she eyes what she assumes is a morphine drip to her left. She could push a button, call a nurse, ask for an increase in the pain meds. But the moment she does that, the room will be flooded with light and she’ll have to test the strength of her vocal chords. She knows that she should, knows that she should let some nurse or doctor working the night shift explain to her how her surgery went. But she’s not ready to face the reality, to face the light.

She feels safer shrouded in the darkness, less vulnerable. It’s just her in here alone with her thoughts, with her pain. The moment she starts getting answers to her questions, she fears her life may start spinning even further out of her control.

But she’s not alone she realizes, as she rolls her head along her pillow and finds Logan’s sleeping form slumped against the edge of her bed. Her chest tightens and it really fucking _hurts_. He hasn’t left her side. He won’t.

_He loves her_.

Veronica squints at the clock on the wall, unable to make out the hands and the time in the dark. Why can’t that be illuminated in red light? She wants to know how much longer she has to fake sleep until either Logan wakes up or someone from the hospital comes to check on her. She could wake him, knows that he would want her to. But she also knows it probably took him long enough to fall asleep. And he _should_ sleep. He’s earned it. He willingly put his hands in her blood to help save her life.

She wishes she could roll over to her side and face away from the door and the red blinking lights. Wishes the shades were drawn up on her window and she could look at the lights of the city instead. Wishes she could distract her mind from the worries and anxieties pulling her chest even tighter than her stitches.

She tests the mobility of her arm, lifting it off the bed and wincing when it pulls at her stitches wrong. Wincing again when she feels the aching stiffness in her left arm from where Cassidy had tasered her twice with her own weapon. That’s when she feels the tears pricking at the corners of her eyes. She’d wondered how long it would take the crying to start. The pain from the physical ache of her body, the pain from losing her father, the pain from realizing what Cassidy had done to her at Shelly’s party, the pain of knowing that even after her attempts at pushing Logan away this past year he’s still here for her when she needs it most.

It’s her crying that wakes him. She’s sure of it. Her hiccupping sobs that hurt her already fragile chest causing more pain on top of the pain that aches deep in her bones. This is too much it’s all too much. She doesn’t know how to deal with any of this, she doesn’t even know where to start.

Logan is out of his chair in seconds, reaching for her, trying to console her, trying to console _himself_ that she’s okay. But she’s not okay. Nothing about this is okay.

“Veronica,” his voice is hoarse. “You’re having a panic attack. I need you to breathe. You’re okay, it’s okay, just breathe.”

She shakes her head trying to force air into her lungs. How does she go back to those first 15 minutes of numbness? How does she stop _this_?

“It’s not,” she chokes out. “Not okay.”

“Veronica –”

“My dad is dead.”

She watches the confusion that passes over his face. There’s so much he doesn’t know. He’d joined them on the roof in the thick of things, was thrown into a fight he’d never asked to be a part of. But she’d never asked for it either. She didn’t want any part of this.

“No, Veronica, he’s not,” Logan shakes his head.

“Cassidy blew up the plane.”

She watches his eyes shift to the morphine drip. Does he think she’s high?

“I don’t know what plane you’re talking about, but your dad is fine. I spoke to him on the phone a couple of hours ago. He’s driving back from picking up Woody. Said he’d come straight here.”

“He’s driving?” she asks around another sob. “He wasn’t on the plane?”

Her head spins as one of her sources of pain tries to blossom into relief. It makes her feel like she’s going to throw up. She screws her eyes shut, sinking further back into her pillow as light-headedness sinks in. She feels Logan’s hand on her arm. He’s concerned and confused, she knows it. So is she.

“Here’s what I know,” he starts softly. “I got a text message forwarded to me telling me to meet someone up on the roof. I didn’t know who sent it or what I’d be walking into, but I knew two things: my dad was staying at the Grand and you had been trying to tell me something earlier that night. And I couldn’t let him do anything to hurt you. So, I went up there and saw Beaver pointing that gun at you, which I’ll admit was one hell of a surprise. I won’t pretend to know what was going on there. But I couldn’t get to you fast enough and you still got shot.”

She opens her eyes to look at him, her panic attack subsiding with the even cadence of his voice and the knowledge that for some reason her dad didn’t get on that plane. He looks pale, still in shock. What was she thinking dragging him into this?

_But he saved her life._

“What happened to him?” she asks quietly.

“Beaver? He jumped,” Logan replies, not looking at her. “Off the roof, he jumped.”

She doesn’t know to respond to that. She doesn’t know how to respond to any of this. She just wants it to not have happened. They just graduated from high school _yesterday_. They shouldn’t be dealing with any of this.

“What did he do, Veronica? Why was he trying to kill you?”

She squeezes her eyes shut again willing all of this to go away. God, her chest hurts. Should the pain be this bad?

“I’ll explain everything,” she assures him. “I promise. But right now, could you go find a doctor? The pain is getting worse.”

“Shit, sorry, I should have done that right away I –”

“It’s okay, you had to calm me down first.”

He squeezes her arm, nodding, before promising his quick return as he steps out of her room. Logan returns a few minutes later with a doctor and her father right behind him.

“I thought you were dead,” is her immediate response upon seeing him, another panic attack threatening to take hold as her tears start again.

Keith shoots Logan a confused look.

“There was a bomb on the plane you were supposed to be on,” Logan offers softly as the doctor checks Veronica over. “At least that’s what I’ve gathered from what she’s told me.”

“Oh honey,” Keith says, moving over to her bedside. “I wasn’t on the plane. Lamb didn’t want me arriving with Woody getting met by the press, so he had them take me off the plane at the last minute. I rented a car. I drove home.”

“I understand you folks have a lot to talk about,” the doctor interjects. “But right now, I need to get her heart rate down, and the stress of this conversation isn’t helping her. Would you mind stepping outside for a few minutes while I give her an exam?”

No, she doesn’t want them to go. She worries if Logan steps back out that door, he won’t come back. And she very much needs him right now.

“Logan,” she calls out just as he pulls the door open. He looks back over his shoulder. “Please don’t go home yet.”

She can’t read the expression on his face like she normally can. Shock, he’s still in shock.

“I wasn’t planning on it. I’m not going anywhere.”

He’s staying. For him, for her, it doesn’t matter. _He’s staying._

Another layer of pressure lifts itself off of her chest.

_He loves her._


	2. Chapter 2

The sun is up by the time the doctor finishes his exam and Keith has supplied both himself and Logan with some terrible hospital coffee that’s really more water than anything else. Logan lingers in the hallway cradling the warm paper cup to his chest, letting Keith spend some alone time with his daughter. Sure, she’d asked him to stay, and while he probably couldn’t even find it in himself to leave if she hadn’t, he feels completely out of place here.

She’d woken up thinking that her father was dead, completely in hysterics. He’d woken up finding out that his father was _actually_ dead and a part of him couldn’t care less. His first thought upon receiving the news as he called into his voicemail from a hospital phone to see if Dick had called him had been good riddance. His second had been a snide thought that he was back in control of the purse strings now. The entire Echolls family fortune was in his control minus whatever inheritance Trina had coming her way.

And then he’d watched Keith go back into Veronica’s room and practically glue himself to her bedside. He’d watched the way her face lit up when she saw him. What’s it like to have a father who actually cares about you? One who isn’t abusive or a murderer? One who leaves you with a gaping hole of sadness at the thought of losing him and not one who barely elicits any type of emotion after he’s gone?

So, he stands in the doorway to her hospital room, nursing the warm coffee water, and waiting to be needed. It’s not like he has anywhere else to be, although he does make a mental note to check in on Dick later since there were no voicemails from him. And again, she’d asked him to stay, so here he is…staying. He wants to tell her that Aaron is dead, shot in his own hotel room, but she doesn’t need that on her plate right now anyway. After all, it’s only a matter of time before Neptune’s finest show up poking around for his alibi. And he has one: he’s been here, with her, all night.

He wonders how long he slept for, uncomfortably slumped over her bed. He doesn’t recall dreaming, only slipping into a blackness he stayed in until the sound of her crying woke him up. His desire to just wrap her up in his arms and hold her is so strong right now, but even without all of the wires and tubes, he’s not sure if she’d let him. Things have been in a weird limbo between them lately. Since Duncan left, since he stopped sleeping with Kendall (minus that one backslide after alterna-prom that had wound up biting him in the ass), and since things ended with Hannah.

He has no freaking idea where they stand, but she wanted him to stay. And that has to mean something. It can’t take away the heartbroken look on her face when Kendall appeared in his room after prom night when Veronica had been trying to extend an olive branch. That’s one thing that haunts him in both his dreams and his waking hours. But she’s trying to forgive him, right? Trying to get back to a place where she looks at him with that smile that makes him feel ridiculously in love with her.

“Logan.”

He snaps out of staring at the arbitrary spot on the floor where his gaze had focused at the sound of her voice. He meets her gaze and she smiles at him. It’s small, but it’s there.

“I’m going to go fill out some paperwork,” Keith announces, pushing himself to his feet. “I’ll be back in a bit.”

He kisses Veronica on the forehead, before exchanging a glance with Logan and exiting the room. Logan takes his spot at her bedside, willing himself not to touch her unless she indicates that she wants the physical comfort. But she’s reaching for him, so he tangles his fingers through hers, thinking it will have to do for now.

“I sent you the text,” she tells him, her voice quiet. “I needed help and I didn’t know who else to ask. You saved my life.”

He shakes his head. “Dr. Burke saved your life. All I did was call 911.”

Now she’s shaking her head at him. “He wanted me to jump. If you hadn’t responded to that text so quickly –”

She trails off, squeezing his hands and fighting back tears.

“I still don’t understand why,” Logan says, trying to push out the images of what would have happened if he had ignored that text like he almost did. “What issue did he have with you?”

She squeezes his hands again. “He was one of Woody’s victims. And he caused the bus crash to keep the other victims from coming forward. He didn’t want that information out there, but I figured it out.”

“How?”

She looks up at the ceiling as though doing so will keep the tears from spilling down her cheeks. She clears her throat. “At your dad’s trial, I’m sure you remember it coming out that I had an STD. Chlamydia to be exact. You know who else had Chlamydia? Woody. Now I _thought_ the only person I’d ever had sex with was Duncan. But I realized that Cassidy had lied to me when I asked him about Shelly’s party. I got the disease from him, even got him to admit to it last night before he blew up that plane and started using my own taser on me.”

“Jesus, Veronica.”

He doesn’t know what to say. No single person deserves this much trauma in their life. Especially not her. Getting shot was traumatic enough, but to confirm her previous suspicion that she had been raped that night a few years ago? All by the same psychopath who had tried to kill her father and then make her end her own life?

He’s never leaving her side again, no matter how annoyed she gets with him.

“Remember freshman year when our biggest concerns were passing chemistry and having the perfect night at school dances?” she asks softly. “I miss that.”

He doesn’t bring up that his biggest concern had always been Aaron. She doesn’t need that right now, and neither does he.

“Sophomore year homecoming,” he concedes with a nod. “The world was ours for the taking that night.”

She smiles at the memory, humming as she leans back against her pillows. “Everything went to shit after Lilly died. And it just keeps getting worse.”

Keith returns to the room then, a somber look on his face. He must have just heard the news about Aaron. Logan didn’t bring it up to him earlier when he found out.

“Logan, have you –”

“Aaron Echolls, found shot dead in his hotel room? Yeah, I heard about an hour ago.”

He hears Veronica’s sharp intake of breath. She mutters something inaudible to herself and he squeezes her hands back in response. Keith seems beside himself with everything that’s happened in the last 48 hours. He leans against the doorframe, rubbing a hand across the back of his neck.

“Mac,” Veronica says suddenly. “Is she – where’s my phone?”

Logan realizes it’s still in his pocket and he lets go of her hands to pull it out and hand it to her.

“You were looking for her last night, did you ever find her?” he asks.

She shakes her head, her fingers busy typing out a new text message. “She was alone with Cassidy and I was trying to find her to warn her that he was behind the bus crash. But he intercepted my message. Sent back that message I forwarded you to meet him on the roof pretending to be her from her phone. When I asked him if she was safe, he told me that she was in a better place. If he killed her –”

She chokes on her own words, forgoing the text message and switching straight to a phone call. Mac must answer because she starts crying with relief a few seconds later and shoving her phone in Logan’s direction when she can’t manage to find the words to reply.

“Mac?” he asks, tentatively into the phone.

“Logan? What’s wrong? Was that Veronica?”

He exhales a long sigh. He doesn’t know how much she already knows. What’s been on the news? What has the Neptune rumor-mill cooked up?

“Yeah, she just wanted to make sure you were okay after last night.”

“I’m hanging in there. I’ve been better. Is she okay?”

“Do you know what happened last night?” he asks instead.

“Not with her. She just disappeared.”

He takes another deep breath. “She’s okay, but she’s in the hospital right now. I’ll let her explain everything to you when she’s ready.”

“She’s in the hospital and _she’s_ the one who’s worried about _me_?”

“Sounds about right, doesn’t it?” he asks, looking over at Veronica.

She looks back at him expectantly, so he reaches out and rubs at her arm reassuringly. He wraps the call up with Mac and hands her back her phone.

“Thank you,” she says quietly, placing it off to her side. “I just couldn’t –”

“I know.”

Keith excuses himself again, in search for food. It amazes him a little bit that he’s so comfortable leaving him alone with his daughter when a year ago he was throwing him out of their house when his temper got the better of him. He must sense this newest shift in their relationship, whatever this new shift is.

Logan feels the gentle pressure of Veronica’s fingertips at his wrist and he turns his attention back to her.

“Before I passed out on the roof,” she starts slowly. “You said that you loved me. Did you mean that? After everything this past year, do you still love me?”

_Oh. She heard that._

“Yes,” he says, nodding. “I meant it.”

He pauses waiting for her to say something, anything, that will give him some sort of indication about how she feels about this. Instead she chews on her lower lip, fidgeting with the hospital bracelet on her wrist.

“That whole epic speech I gave you on prom night wasn’t enough to tip you off?” he asks when she still doesn’t respond.

Now, she meets his gaze. “You told me the next day that you were drunk and didn’t remember what you said.”

“I lied,” he says, shifting his eyes away from hers. “I wanted you to leave before you saw that Kendall was there. Because I meant all that stuff too and I knew you seeing her would hurt you. And it did.”

He looks back to her face, taking in her expression. She must be thinking about that morning again because that same hurt look is written all over her face. Fuck, he didn’t mean to do that again.

“Why would you want me when you could have someone like her?” Her voice is small and it breaks him, shattering whatever was left of his composure.

“Veronica,” he chokes out. “You’ve got it all wrong. Why would I want her, when I could have you?”

She squeezes her eyes shut, tears rolling down her cheeks. She’s crying again and this time it’s because of him. Why did she want him to stay? All he’s doing is causing her more pain. She doesn’t need this right now.

“Why do you want me?” she asks, her voice still soft and sounding like she’s miles away instead of right in front of him.

Logan reaches out to brush her hair out of her face, one of his thumbs lingering against her cheek before he takes hold of her hands again.

“You show up for me,” he tells her. “You always have, even when you hate my guts. I should be asking _you_ why you want anything to do with _me_. I’ve known you a long time, Veronica. I know who you are. I’d have to be both blind and insane not to want you.”

He needs to hold her. He needs longer than four minutes and 21 seconds in the middle of a crowded dance floor where they wouldn’t even let themselves fall into each other. He needs more than the year’s worth of accidental brushes and touches. He just needs her to know that he’s here and he’s _hers_ if she’ll have him.

And that’s when he realizes, she needs it too. She’s tugging on his arms until he’s out of the chair and sitting on the edge of her bed so she can wrap her arms around his torso and rest her head against his chest.

“Isn’t this pulling at your stitches?” he asks, trying to return her embrace even with how uncomfortable her current position looks.

“Yes,” she huffs against his shirt. “But shut up, I need this.”

She needs this. _She needs him_.

Logan nudges her to scoot over, forcing her to make space for him. There has to be a better way to do this where she’s not in pain. He’s sitting more fully on the bed with her now, draping one arm across her shoulders and letting her head fall against his shoulder. He takes his free hand and reaches back for one of hers, lacing their fingers together. She seems content with this.

“Are we doing this?” he asks after a moment of silence. “Giving our relationship another chance?”

She nods against him. “I meant it when I said I didn’t want to lose you from my life. And now after all of this…if life is going to keep being this hard and shitty, I need someone to get through it with. And I want that person to be you.”

“I’m yours,” he says, placing a kiss to the crown of her head.

She hums in response, trying to snuggle in closer to him. Then it’s like a memory hits him that he’s tried to push away. She’s always been like this. Curling into his side when they watched a movie, reaching for his hand when she met him over lunch while he was in summer school. Hell, he’d even watched her snuggle up against Duncan more times than he ever wanted to replay in his head. Tough exterior, Veronica Mars was a cuddler. And now he feels like an ass about another off-handed comment he’d made to her this past year.

_If cuddling is the best part, he didn’t do it right._

He didn’t mean – she knew what he meant, right? It was supposed to be a jab at Duncan not about – he files that away with a mental note to revisit it later under different conditions, instead trying to pull her closer to him.

“You know,” he starts, brushing his fingers against the side of her neck. “You didn’t have to take what I said to you on prom night this seriously to get me back.”

He worries it might be too soon to be joking about this, but also feels like if he doesn’t broach the topic, it’s going to do nothing but run on a loop through his brain.

“What do you mean?” she asks.

“Bloodshed,” he answers softly, wondering if that spot of her blood is still stuck under his thumbnail.

“Whose blood did you expect to be spilled?”

“Better mine than yours.”

“Don’t do that,” she says, shaking her head. “You’ve been through enough.”

“So have you.”

That’s when Keith walks back in with the food. He seems startled to find them in their current position, side by side wrapped around each other, but honestly not that surprised. He doesn’t comment on it, instead parsing out the food he bought for himself and Logan and the doctor-approved meal he brought in for Veronica. She grimaces at the sight of the Jello cup, eyeing the burgers instead.

“Give it time, honey,” her dad tells her. “You’ll be back to eating burgers with us in no time.”

* * *

Logan leaves. He tells her it’s so he can shower and change clothes and maybe actually sleep in a bed instead of being hunched over hers. But she thinks her dad’s hovering presence had scared him home earlier than he wanted to go. He still seemed like he had more to ask her about when he left. But there is so much being left unsaid right now, she can’t even pinpoint where he’d wanted to start.

“So, you and Logan, huh?” Keith asks, pulling over a second chair to use as a footrest. “You’re together again?”

She nods, wishing her father would just accept it and move on. But she knows that he won’t.

“How’d that happen?” he asks.

_He saved my life. He’s the only person alive who knows I was raped. He knows all of me and loves me anyway._

“It just sort of did,” she answers with a shrug.

“He cares about you, you know. Pretty sure he would have been in the operating room with you if they would have let him.”

She gives him a small smile, twisting at her hospital bracelet. “He’s lost a lot.”

Lilly. His mother. The friendship he’d had with Duncan. His abusive father adding murderer to his resume.

“Well I speak for us both, when I say I’m glad you’re not someone else we had to lose.”

She’d watched Logan spiral after Lilly died. Watched him turn on her because of her father’s opinions and the ways in which being around her reminded him of his dead girlfriend. She’d watched him lose his composure after he lost his mother. She was there to comfort him while he was still trying to recover from losing Lilly when Lynn died too. What would he do if he lost her? Would he turn on Dick the way he had turned on her after Lilly just because his brother was the one responsible? Who would he have then? Mercer? His other asshole surfing buddies? Or would they all side with Dick?

Her chest tightens at the thought of leaving him completely alone with no one but his mostly flaky sister in his corner. Where had all of their friends gone? What happened to the way things used to be freshman and sophomore year? Hopefully, Wallace and Mac would look out for him. In memory of her if nothing else. Can you leave friends to other friends in your will after you die?

She tells herself to stop with the what ifs. She’s here. She’s alive. No one lost her. She’s not dead.

“Me too,” Veronica answers softly.

She wonders how long her dad is going to give her before he starts asking questions. He’d spent most of the morning asking just about the plane and Cassidy’s connection to Woody. He hasn’t asked her how she’d ended up in the crossfire yet. Hasn’t asked which wrong turn in her investigation led her to this hospital bed.

“You want to tell me what happened yet?” Keith asks, gently.

There it is.

“What do you want me to say? I knew too much and he wanted to shut me up. All your concern about mob bosses and the kid who barfed fruit punch all over our living room carpet at my 10th birthday party shot me. I didn’t exactly see it coming.”

“Veronica, I’m not trying to blame you here. I just want to understand.”

“Yeah, so do I.”

She’s extremely grateful that he’s alive. She will do whatever she can to repay the universe for taking him off of that plane. But she doesn’t want to talk to him right now. Least of all about this, something she barely understands herself.

“Maybe you take a break from the P.I. stuff,” he suggests. “Stop agreeing to do your classmates favors?”

“This didn’t happen because I caught some kid at Neptune High in another elaborate hoax to earn a couple extra bucks. Helping people isn’t what got me here.”

“Veronica –”

“And I can try and start over at Hearst. I know a good portion of my graduating class is going to school there too, but I can cut back on the investigating. But that’s not going to change things. Lilly’s still dead. Mom’s still gone. And now I get this neat little scar to remind me of a day I would so much rather forget.”

She wants to stop talking about this. Wants to stop thinking about how her dying would have affected everybody close to her. All she wants to do is sleep, but she knows that won’t come easy either. Every time she closes her eyes, she’s back up on that rooftop. She doesn’t know how to turn it off, how to think about literally anything else.

“Talk to me about the other cases you’re working right now,” she asks her dad instead. “What happened with that widow that wasn’t actually a widow?”

“Honey –”

“Dad, please. I need to focus on something else right now.”

Keith sighs, shifting his legs off of the second chair so he can lean forward and lay a comforting hand on her arm. “So, she’d already claimed the insurance money, right? And when her not actually dead husband tried to access his bank account…”

She listens to him, trying to focus all of her attention on his words and this story alone. But in the back of her mind she can still hear Cassidy taunting her. She can still hear him making jokes about pirates and getting her to walk the plank. And then someone in the hallway drops a food tray and the clattering sound it makes against the linoleum floor causes her to nearly jump out of her skin.

Sleep still won’t come easy tonight.


	3. Chapter 3

He goes to see her the day she’s discharged from the hospital. She’s still mostly on bedrest, aside from being encouraged to get up and get a certain number of steps in each day to build back up her stamina. And if there’s one thing Logan has learned about Veronica Mars over the years, it’s that she does not take too kindly to simply sitting still and doing nothing. So, he plans to take it upon himself to keep her entertained.

Besides, he hasn’t seen her since that day in the hospital. He’s spoken with her on the phone, texted her, but he never went back. Told her that he couldn’t stomach it. Nothing to do with her and her IV and her heart monitor, and everything to do with him and the nightmares he can’t seem to shake.

Her dying on the operating table. Him not making it up to the roof in time. Cassidy shooting him instead.

So, he avoids the hospital to avoid any new material from seeping into his dreams. She tells him that she gets it, that she understands. But he hears the hurt in her voice after he tells her he needs to stay away.

_She needs him_.

And damnit he needs her too.

Keith answers the door when he knocks, eyeing the bouquet of “get well soon” flowers cradled in his arms.

“Where have you been?” he asks, not yet stepping aside to let him enter.

Logan wonders if he should take that as a sign that it’s been bad these past couple of days. But Veronica knows it’s the hospital setting that’s been keeping him away and not her, even if her father didn’t get the memo. Doesn’t she?

“Just trying to give you guys some space,” he answers with a small shrug. “You didn’t need an extra body hovering around in that small room.”

“We made do when Wallace and Mac dropped by,” Keith says, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Look, with all due respect Mr. Mars, she knows why. It’s not like I haven’t been talking with her. And I’m here now.”

Keith steps aside but stops him again before he can head to Veronica’s room. “See if you can get her to talk to you about all of this, will you? Every time I try, she just changes the subject.”

Logan nods, not sure if he’ll be any better at getting her to open up. She always did like to keep her emotions to herself.

He steps into her room, finding her propped up in bed, flipping through some magazine without actually reading anything from it. Bored out of her skull, just like he suspected.

“Getting caught up on the latest celebrity gossip via osmosis?” he asks. “Here’s a hot take for you, son of the late movie stars Aaron and Lynn Echolls uses his newly inherited family fortune to buy a boat he definitely does not know how to drive. Quarter life crisis at the ripe old age of 18? More at 5:00.”

She huffs, tossing the magazine off to the side. “You bought a boat?”

He nods, stepping further into the room and brandishing the bouquet of flowers. “Couldn’t fit it in my Xterra so I brought flowers instead.”

“Why the hell did you buy a boat?”

He shrugs, sitting down on the edge of her bed and laying the flowers across her lap. “You do weird things when it’s 3 AM and you can’t turn your brain off.”

“Don’t I know it,” she grumbles, rubbing at her eyes before reaching down for the flowers. “Thank you for these.”

Logan watches her, wondering what weird things she’s been doing at 3 AM. “You haven’t been sleeping, have you?”

She shakes her head, picking at the tissue paper that wraps the flowers.

“Not at all?” he prods.

“A few hours here and there. And then the nightmares start. It’s worse than when Lilly died.”

He remembers her constantly falling asleep in classes that year after it had happened. But they hadn’t exactly been on friendly terms then, his own grief pushing her away. She’s never talked to him about her nightmares before. He doesn’t know how bad they were before to make these new ones worse.

“What happens in them?” he asks.

She shrugs, still picking at the tissue paper. “What _doesn’t_ happen in them?”

He wants so badly to protect her from all of this, but it’s not within his power to do so.

“Veronica –”

“My dad thinks I should go to therapy,” she cuts him off.

His gaze softens when he notices how uncomfortable the idea makes her. “Maybe you should. It could help.”

“Have you?”

“Have I what? Been going to therapy?”

“Been sleeping.”

He sees what Keith means by her wanting to constantly change the subject. He’s not ready to give up on that topic so easily, but he answers her honestly anyway. “No.”

“It’s messed up. All of this is so fucking messed up.”

“Hey, look I know what you’re going through –”

“Do you? Have you been shot before?”

She’s visibly shaking. From her anxiety? From trying not to cry? From the same cold numbness that has seeped into his bones since that night on the roof and hasn’t left?

“No. But I watched the light leave your eyes up on the roof. I thought I had just watched you die, bleed out right under my own hands. I don’t need to be the one who took the bullet to feel the effects of the trauma from this.”

She’s shaking her head now and he’s not sure whether she’s trying to disagree with him or her own inner monologue.

“I want it to have never happened,” she says softly. “I want to take it all back. Everything. All of it. I want it to go away.”

Logan scoots closer to her on the bed, pulling her into his arms and up against his chest. She falls into him, clinging to his shirt as her sobs start. He wonders how often she’s broken down like this in the past couple of days. He knows that he’s had his fair share alone in the Grand this past week. Even tried to chase them away with alcohol, but that had only made things worse. He resigns that he’s not doing this alone anymore and neither is she. They’re in this together whether she wants to accept it or not.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers a few minutes later once she’s calmed herself down. But she doesn’t let go of him and he doesn’t dare let go of her.

“Vee, I know you’re scared. But you’re not going to get through this without some help.”

“Help like therapy? I just don’t see how talking to someone else about all of this is supposed to help me. What advice do they have that will make the nightmares stop?”

“I’ll go if you go.”

She looks up at him. “You’ll go to therapy?”

“Almost losing you isn’t the first shitty traumatic thing that’s happened to me. I could probably use it. But you’ve got to promise me you’ll go too. At least try it. I hear that sleeping through the night has its benefits. They might be able to help us get back to that. And to buy less boats.”

Her shivering has stopped. Maybe she was as cold and numb as he constantly feels these days. But he doesn’t feel the chill now, not with her tucked up against him. Not when he can visibly see and feel that she’s safe.

“If I don’t like it, I can stop?” she asks.

“Maybe give it more than one session, but yeah. We need to try something that might help us. I know college is infamous for pulling all-nighters, but I don’t think it’s supposed to last the entire semester and the summer before.”

She sighs and he thinks that might mean that she’s conceding, but she changes the topic again so he’s not actually sure. “I’m sorry you got dragged into this. I didn’t mean to add this stress to your life and take away your ability to sleep.”

“If you hadn’t, you might not be here at all and then where would that leave me?”

She pulls him closer. “What kind of boat did you buy?”

“It’s not like a houseboat or anything, just a speed boat. Water-skiing is kind of like surfing, right?”

He thinks she might be laughing at that, but she’s so quiet he can’t actually tell. He resolves to get her to sleep even if it’s only for a little while and starts to tell her a story about one of the surfing trips he took with Dick and Mercer. When he feels her to start to get heavy in his arms, he repositions them on the bed so they’re both more comfortable and moves the flowers down to the floor. When her breathing evens out and he’s sure she’s asleep, he allows his eyes to close too. And for the first time in what feels like days, he sleeps.

* * *

_She’s back in that bedroom at Shelly Pomroy’s house. Cassidy’s on top of her. Inside of her. She can’t move. He has a gun this time. Has he always had a gun? He’s laughing at her now. Laughing as he takes what he wants from her. Laughing as he presses the barrel of the gun into her chest. Laughing as he pulls the trigger._

“No!” the scream rips from her throat forcing her awake.

Logan startles beneath her, shaking himself out of his own dream fog and rubbing a hand reassuringly up and down her back. He murmurs to her that she’s okay and that’s she safe. He tells her that he’s got her and that it’s going to be okay.

But it’s never going to be okay. No amount of therapy can undo what’s happened. The clock doesn’t just get to be wound backwards.

She focuses back in on Logan trying to comfort her.

“It’s over,” he’s telling her. “It’s over.”

How is it really over if her brain keeps showing it to her on repeat?

Veronica curls tighter into his side, inhaling the familiar scent of his cologne. She lets the scent ground her, lets it bring her back to the present instead of out straddling two twisted together versions of the past. The worry in his voice is increasing and she realizes he’s waiting on her to say something.

“I’m okay,” she says, not even believing the sound of her own voice. “What time is it?”

“1:30,” he says, looking over at the clock.

Two hours. That’s all she’d slept for. Again.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asks.

She shakes her head, chewing on her lower lip.

“Maybe it would help if you did,” he suggests, gently.

“You were there, Logan. What is there to talk about?”

She hears how harsh the words sound after they’ve already left her lips. He’s only trying to help. He’s suffering too.

“Sorry,” she apologizes, reaching over to kiss his cheek. “The lack of sleep makes me cranky.”

She hears his intake of breath when her lips brush against his skin. _Oh._ Right. This is all new again. Another readjustment. He isn’t Duncan. She isn’t Kendall _or_ Hannah. But they’ve done this all before. It feels like another lifetime ago at this point, but they’ve been here before.

If only they could get past this PTSD no sleep zone they’ve both wound up in.

“What is it about talking about all of this that scares you so much?” he asks, rubbing at her back again.

She shakes her head. “It’s stupid.”

“I won’t judge.”

He understands her, always has. He gets her more than more most people do.

“Talking about it makes it real,” she sighs. “Which is dumb because it _is_ real. It’s something that happened to me. Something that happened to us.”

“I get it,” he tells her. “That’s why I couldn’t come back to the hospital. I’m losing enough sleep as it is.”

“I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours.”

He looks down at her and she can read the fear in his eyes. He doesn’t want to relive his nightmares any more than she does hers. That’s what she’s banking on anyway. But he takes a deep breath and pulls her back close against him.

“Last night, my dad was the one up on the roof with you. He’d killed you the exact same way he killed Lilly. And he looked me dead in the eyes and said ‘son, you’re not the only one with a thing for blondes.’ It’s like everything from the past couple of years is just culminating and morphing into one horrific event and my brain doesn’t know how to separate them anymore.”

She squeezes her eyes shut. Not him too. They’re not supposed to share demons.

“I’m alive,” she whispers as though speaking the words could fix everything going on in his head. “And the same thing is happening to me. Events are getting mixed up, some of which I don’t have any actual memories for. Like the rape. The one I just had – he was on top of me at Shelly’s but he had a gun this time. I don’t know if it makes it better or worse that I don’t have any real memories from that night.”

She feels his arms tighten around her and then release, as though he’s worried he’s hurting her chest. The pain is down to a dull ache today, even with the pain meds. He’s in no way hurting her, so she tightens her own grip around his torso to reassure him.

“We shouldn’t have to be dealing with any of this,” Logan says with a sigh. “We should be off celebrating the fact that high school is over, enjoying summer. But you’re right about what you said at the hospital, about things going to shit after Lilly died. We’ve been dealing with fucked up situation after fucked situation ever since and it just never seems to end. We were forced to grow up at 16 and haven’t had the chance to breathe.”

“So let’s fix it.”

“Fix it how? That brain of yours figure out how to time travel?”

She shakes her head against his chest. “Let’s let ourselves be teenagers again. Make up for lost time.”

“Veronica –”

“Look, my summer is already riddled with physical therapy and doctor appointments. Adding the talking type of therapy to that? I’m going to want to crawl out of my own skin to get away from all of this. I need something in my day to day that isn’t about Cassidy or Lilly or any of it. I just want to feel like a normal teenage girl for once instead of feeling like someone who’s been through everything I have.”

“So what? You want to hold hands at the mall and have me win you some ridiculous stuffed animal at a carnival or something?”

“Yes, that’s exactly what I want.”

He looks down at her, amusement dancing across his face. “Renting a limo and staying out at the beach all night? Making out in the backseats of cars and on bathrooms sinks? That sort of stuff?”

She smiles up at him, the first genuine smile she thinks she’s had since that night on the roof. “I still think about that a lot you know.”

“Which part?”

“Making out with you in your backseat.”

He returns her smile and god it feels so good to see him happy for a change.

“I’m that memorable, huh?” he asks, wiggling his eyebrows.

She knows better than to feed his ego, she really does, but right now it feels too good to just stop thinking about everything that’s been haunting them for five minutes. To just take a step back and breathe and laugh. This is therapeutic too isn’t it? Its own type of healing power?

“Just once I would have liked us not to have gotten interrupted,” she sighs.

Now he’s laughing and the sound does wonders for her well-being. Like stepping out into the warm sun after a weekend of non-stop autumn rain.

“No one ever did let us finish us, huh?” he asks, shaking his head.

“Yeah, in more ways than one.”

His eyes widen at her implication and she grins back up at him.

“Are you saying you would have let me…” he trails off, practically staring at her in disbelief.

“Wasn’t it obvious, Logan? How bad I wanted you?”

She watches his face as he recalls a memory. Watches the curl of his lips into another smile. Listens as he clears his throat, likely trying to chase his arousal from it away. Oh, she used to get him so worked up. She could always feel it, feel _him_. Could always feel the electricity it sent through her as she sought out more of him and his mouth and his touch…

“So, normal teenager stuff huh? I take it you still remember how to cover up a hickey at this point? Because I see a lot of those happening in your future.”

She smiles again, feeling the heat of the blush on her cheeks. “Yeah I remember. And just think we’ll have actual privacy this time with your hotel room and all.”

“You’ll get to finish.”

She blushes harder despite being the one to start this conversation.

“All right, what else?” Logan asks. “What else do these so-called normal teenagers do?”

Veronica hums. “I don’t know. Take me to dinner? A movie? Out on this new boat of yours once you figure out to drive it?”

There’s that laugh of his again, warming her from the inside out. “I can do that.”

“What about you?” she asks. “What completely normal teenage things do you want to do this summer?”

He shrugs, a mischievous look passing over his features. “Piss off my girlfriend’s father by keeping her out too late?”

“Careful, said girlfriend’s father still carries a gun.”

Another laugh, the feather-like brush of his lips against her hair. She’s needed this, needed _him_.

“Don’t disappear on me again, okay?” she asks, shifting her weight against him so she’s more comfortable. “If you’re dealing with something regarding all of this, it’s very likely I am too. And this?” She gestures between them. “It helps. You shouldn’t have to fight off the nightmares alone.”

“I’m sorry,” he says softly. “I’m here. I won’t.”

She nods against his chest, feeling another round of drowsiness threaten to overtake her. If she could just sleep without dreaming for once, she might actually get more than two hours. But she’s not sure if she’s there yet. Her dad and Logan might be right, therapy may actually help with that.

“Go ahead and try and sleep, Veronica,” Logan tells her, sensing her nodding off and rubbing small circles against her back. “You’re safe. He can’t hurt you ever again.”

This time when she dozes off, she doesn’t wake up until she smells the aroma of whatever dinner her dad is cooking up in the kitchen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys are seriously amazing, your comments on this story never fail to make my day brighter. Thank you for reading and sharing your thoughts!


	4. Chapter 4

_He can’t breathe. Why can’t he breathe? And that sound, what is that? Someone’s in pain. A woman. Veronica. Where is she? Why can’t he get to her? Why can he barely manage to lift his head? She’s yelling his name. Calling for him, crying for him. He tries to yell back but nothing comes out. Is he underwater? He doesn’t feel wet. Not everywhere. His chest maybe though. It feels wet. Veronica’s sobbing is getting louder. Her blonde hair swings into view across his vision. Her face is red and tear streaked. She’s saying something else now. He can barely hear her. He needs her to be closer. He focuses in on trying to read her lips._

_“You weren’t supposed to leave me. You’re not supposed to die.”_

Logan sits bolt upright in bed, rubbing a hand against his chest, trying to still his racing heart. His forehead is beaded with sweat and his sheets are in a twisted-up pile on the floor. He buries his face in his hands, trying to shake off the dream. It’s one of three recurring ones that tend to pepper his various nightmares these days. He hates this one, the one where he gets shot instead of her, the most. It’s not because of the pain or some fear about dying. It’s watching her break. It’s watching her fall apart over his lifeless body. It’s the sounds of her screaming and crying his name. She always looks so helpless and it guts him.

He hadn’t expected one week of therapy to fix everything or make the nightmares go away. He’d hoped it might at least help him sleep, but that still wasn’t happening. Not in any normal sort of pattern anyway.

He’s grateful that it’s summer and he doesn’t have places to be or schoolwork to keep up with. There’s no way he’d be able to manage with the way he feels like a literal walking zombie these days. All the melatonin in the world can’t help him now. It seems time and therapy are his only potential remedies. Those and Veronica. Visiting her is the only bright spot in his otherwise dark days, especially since Dick still isn’t returning any of his calls.

Logan pushes himself the rest of the way out of his bed and goes to shower and get ready to see her. It’s been three days since he’s been over, Wallace and Mac have been occupying her free time. He’s glad she still has her best friends to lean on through this. He just wishes he still had his. He knows Dick is struggling with his brother’s suicide and hearing the news that he had been the one to shoot Veronica, but he just wishes he would let him talk to him about it. They’ve _all_ had a rough couple of weeks so far this summer.

By the time he pulls up to the Mars’ residence, Keith is just leaving to take Backup out on a walk. The dog greets him happily as he steps out of his car and he’s glad he’s at least on Backup’s good side now even if Keith is still a little weary of him.

“How’s she doing today?” Logan asks as he bends down to rub Backup behind the ears.

“About the same,” Keith sighs. “She’s going stir crazy on bedrest, and she’s still not open to talking about anything much. Won’t even tell me how her therapy session went.”

“Did you find someone who does house calls?”

He shakes his head. “I think that’s the only reason she agreed to go. It got her out of the house for an hour.”

“She just needs time.”

“Oh, so suddenly you’re the expert on my daughter?” Keith asks, raising an eyebrow.

Logan shakes his head, standing back up. “Just dealing with similar demons.”

Keith sighs. “You guys are too young to have to deal with any of this.”

“Yeah well, we were all too young when Lilly died too. We’ve been at this a while already.”

He nods, tugging on Backup’s leash as the dog tries to start the walk without him. There’s more he’s not saying, Logan can tell, but it’s likely not something he’s comfortable discussing with him in particular. “She was asleep when I left. Don’t wake her if you can help it, she needs the sleep. Oh and the hide-a-key is temporarily under the welcome mat.”

Logan nods, watching him turn to leave. He wonders how much longer it will take him to get on Keith Mars’s good side. All fathers of teenage daughters hate the boyfriend, right? And most boyfriends don’t have his type of particular sordid past.

He’s sure to be quiet as he locates the hide-a-key and enters into their apartment, keeping his footsteps light as he walks toward her bedroom. She’s laying on her side, curled up under the covers, but her eyes are open. He leans against her doorframe, watching as her gaze drifts up to meet his.

“Your dad said you were asleep,” he says softly.

“I was. For about an hour maybe.”

“Did I wake you?”

She shakes her head. “Lilly did.”

He starts to question her when she waves him off, pushing herself up into a seated position.

“You here to shrink me or take my mind off of things?”

Logan pushes himself off from the doorframe and moves to sit on the edge of her bed. “Whatever you need.”

She scoots closer to him, leaning against his chest and wrapping her arms around his torso. He’s always thought that she fits so perfectly against him, like all he has to do is wrap her up in his arms to keep her safe. If only it were that simple.

“How’s the pain today?” he asks into her hair.

“It’s improving.”

“Good. We have all of these typical teenager adventures to go on once you’re off bed rest, after all.”

“Can’t come fast enough,” she mutters.

“Wanna play a card game or something? A little Poker so you can hustle me out of more of my money?”

He thinks he hears her laugh, but she doesn’t let go of him or shift away.

“In a minute.” Her voice is quiet.

“What was the dream?” he presses, because he knows that’s what’s currently occupying her mind. He hasn’t been able to shake the sound of her crying in his dream all morning. Even now with her quietly and safely tucked up against him, he can still hear it. It makes him pull her in against him even closer.

“Lilly wanted me to follow her somewhere. Where exactly, I don’t know. I used to have this one a lot right after she died, but it’s been a while.”

“Did she come up with your therapist?”

Veronica nods but doesn’t offer more and he’s too afraid to press her harder for details. Hadn’t he just told Keith that she needed time?

“So, what will it be? Texas Hold ‘Em? Five Card Draw?”

She pulls back to look up at him now, a small smile on her face. “I’m good with Texas.”

“Excellent, where do I find cards?”

“In the kitchen. Drawer closest to the fridge.”

He kisses her forehead before fully pulling away from her to go retrieve the deck. He pops his head back into her room a moment later. “Poker chips?”

“Less sure,” she tells him.

Logan hums, turning back to her kitchen and living room. He spots a large bag of M&Ms on the counter and decides they’ll work for today. He walks back into her room, tossing the bag of candy and the deck of cards onto her bed.

“Game snacks?” she asks, picking up the M&Ms.

“Poker chips,” he explains, pulling the cards out of their box.

“They better still represent real money. Your girl has to pay for college. And medical bills.”

“Ah so you’re my girl now, huh?” he asks, starting to shuffle the cards. “And yet you’re still threatening to take my money?”

“Yeah, yeah I am. You got a problem with that?”

He shakes his head, dealing her hand of cards. “No problem at all.”

She wins the first round. And the second. He’s sure he’s got her beat in the third with his straight flush, but she lays down her hand to reveal a _royal_ flush. Son of a bitch.

“Don’t blame me,” she laughs at his grumbling. “You’re the one who dealt.”

“Who taught you how to play Poker, anyway? Your dad?”

She nods, taking the deck from him to shuffle the cards. “I think I was about nine or ten. I remember telling him that I was too old to play Go Fish, so naturally he tried to teach me Poker.”

“And how’d that work out?”

She gestures to the pile of M&Ms in front her. “Well.”

Logan laughs, stealing one from her stash and popping it into his mouth.

“Hey! That was 50 bucks!”

He laughs again. “I’m good for it.”

She crosses her arms over her chest with a huff and leans back against her mountain of pillows.

“How’d you learn this game, anyway?” she asks. “Watching those weird late-night airings of poker tournaments on TV?”

He steals another one of her M&Ms. “No, actually my dad taught me too.”

She shoots him a look of surprise, and he honestly can’t say that he blames her. Father-son bonding time was never very high on his priority list. 

“Trina wanted to learn to impress some boy,” Logan shrugs. “Aaron insisted I learn too. ‘It’s a useful tool, son. Helps to make you a real man.’ Etcetera, Etcetera.”

“So, do you feel like a real man because you know how to play Poker?”

“Not when my girlfriend keeps winning every hand.”

She smiles at him, over her winnings or over his use of the word “girlfriend,” he isn’t sure. If only he could keep her smiling at him like that forever though. Happy, he just wants her to be happy.

“Do I emasculate you?” she asks without the smile dropping from her face.

What he wants to do is kiss that smirk right off her face.

“Quite the opposite I’d say. Especially when you let me be on top.”

She’s blushing now, ducking her head and trying to avoid his gaze. “Don’t get me started, Echolls, my doctor told me I’m not ready for that yet.”

“I so hope your dad wasn’t in the room when you were given this information.”

She laughs. “Thankfully no. I’m 18, after all. Legally an adult.”

“Yeah and you’re only a couple months shy of being 19. Want anything special for your birthday?”

“You know, I’ve been asking my dad for a pony for years and he just won’t commit.”

“Ah yes, but where would you keep it?”

“He always expresses that exact same concern.”

Logan smirks. “Have you ever even actually ridden a horse?”

She gives him an exasperated sigh. “I’m not asking for a horse. I want a pony.”

“Fair enough, you’re short enough.”

She huffs and chucks an M&M at his head. He laughs ducking out of the way.

“Let me rephrase, have you ever ridden a pony?”

Veronica nods. “At the county fair when I was like…five.”

“I see.”

“Hey,” she starts, pointing a finger at him. “We didn’t all grow up with rich parents doing rich people hobbies like dressage.”

“What about me tells you I ever did dressage?” he asks, gesturing to himself.

“If the riding boot fits.”

“Do you know me at all?”

She’s smirking at him again. “Yeah, yeah I know who you are, surfer boy. Your parents never tried to put you in other activities though? I think we _both_ remember my soccer phase.”

“I stand by my previous statement that you were hot in that uniform.”

“Really? That’s what does it for you?”

“At 12, yeah.”

She rolls her eyes at him. “Answer my question.”

“You know my parents, Veronica. You think they were ever concerned about what I was doing?”

“You were a kid once, Logan,” she says, reaching for his hand. “They just let you do whatever your tiny kid heart desired?”

He twines his fingers through hers. “They sent me to an acting camp one summer. I hated it. As large as my personality is, turns out I get stage fright. Aaron was not too pleased that particular part of the family genetics didn’t take. Then he thought he’d try and make a jock out of me and signed me up for Pee Wee Football. Turns out, I’m not very good at the whole sports thing either. Only thing that ever stuck was the surfing lessons. Mom’s idea. Go figure.”

He looks up and meets her gaze, noticing how intently she’s watching him. “Why’d you quit soccer?”

She shrugs before parroting back his words. “Turns out, I’m not very good at the whole sports thing.”

There are still M&Ms and cards all over her bedspread, but he scoots around them to sit next to her against her mountain of pillows. He’s half falling off her twin bed and she’s laughing at him struggle, but he doesn’t care. He’s fine with this: the sound of her laughter, the feel of her touch. She lays her head on his shoulder and it catches in his chest just how much he loves her.

He doesn’t even know how he got here. They were friends for years, then he hated her, then there was a lot of kissing, and then she hated him. But she kept showing up for him. No matter what it was, if he needed help and asked for it, she was there. And she _knows_ him. Better than Dick and Duncan even, and sometimes he thinks even better than Lilly ever did. Why she cares to know him this well, he’ll never understand. He’s just grateful that she does. Grateful that she chooses to let him in and not hate him anymore. He was not a fan of that, which makes him feel even more like an asshole for how he treated her before all of the kissing.

“What made you change your mind about me?” he asks, fidgeting with the hem of her sheet underneath his thigh.

“What do you mean?”

“This past year…” he trails off. “Hell, the year after Lilly died even…”

“You were kind of an ass?” she asks slowly.

“More or less.”

“You just – I don’t know. Maybe it’s our history we have with each other. Back when it was the four of us, we were good friends. And then we lost Lilly and Duncan left. Maybe it’s stupid of me to try and hold onto something from middle school even as we start college this fall, but I don’t want to let go. I like having you around. I like you. I’m just sorry it took me all year to realize that.”

“Just keeping me around for the memories, huh?” he asks, continuing to fidget with her sheets.

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

She lifts her head off his shoulder and he turns his head to look at her.

“You get me,” she tells him. “You always have. My sense of humor, my fears, all of it. Remember how many times when we were all together, I’d tell a joke, or you would, and we were the only two who would think it was funny? Remember being 15 and counting and comparing the number of bottles of alcohol our mothers tried to hide in the trash because they were both convinced they didn’t have problems, but even at 15 we knew? Remember that night of Homecoming when Duncan and Lilly both passed out in the limo and you and I sat on the beach watching the sunrise? I don’t want to lose that friendship. And now it gets to be something more than a friendship.”

He didn’t realize how long he’s loved her. Not until right now. He’d been so blinded by whatever it was that Lilly was, that he’d missed how close he’d gotten with Veronica. He remembers leaning into her side at lunch to make some joke about their ‘09er lunch crowd that that he knew only she would find funny and would only earn him eye rolls from anyone else. He remembers studying for a history test at her house one night, which Lilly had bailed on, and witnessing her mother stumble in drunk. He remembers how embarrassed she had been until he told her about his own mother’s problems.

But most of all he remembers that night into morning of Homecoming. She’d had maybe two glasses of champagne before cutting herself off. She didn’t want to turn into her mother. He remembers drinking less than his usual amount in solidarity. It’s no fun being the only sober person in a group. And after the Kane siblings had had one too many and passed out in the limo, he remembers exchanging a glance with her and tugging her outside. He’d laid out his dad’s suit coat for her to sit on in the sand; Duncan had already gotten champagne on it, so he knew he was already in for it with Aaron. And they sat there and talked as the sun rose up over the horizon. How they were both going to get the hell out of Neptune as soon as they were 18. How they both wanted to go explore Europe. How he wanted to go to Australia to surf. Her feeling of dread about having to go home and face her dad after not coming home last night. His silence that Keith would be much easier on her than Aaron would be with him.

“Dick’s gonna be pissed,” he whistles.

She scrunches up her nose in that way he finds completely adorable. God, he has it bad for her. “About what?”

“You might actually be my best friend.”

She smiles and it’s so warm he almost forgets that they’re stuck inside on this warm day in late May because someone they once considered to be their friend tried to kill her. They’re back out on that beach watching the sunrise and she’s smiling at him while he describes all of the authentic pasta they’re going to try in Italy someday.

“Don’t tell Wallace, he’ll be crushed,” she says settling her head back against his shoulder.

“Crushed about what?”

“You being my best friend.”

Yeah. Yes. He loves her.


	5. Chapter 5

_Sometimes facing your fears is all it takes to get over them._

_It can’t be that easy. If it were that easy, everyone would be fearless._

_Facing them head on is harder than you think._

_I mean sure, how do I face a ghost?_

She’s finally off of bedrest and she’s grateful to be allowed out somewhere else besides the hospital and her therapist’s office. But she can’t shake the feeling that Logan is going to find her idea for her first post-surgery outing a little bizarre. Because it is. It’s certainly a far cry from the normal teenager things on their to do list.

But all she wants at this point is to sleep through the night again. And if that means she has to drag Logan back up to the roof of his hotel building to face an invisible ghost, she’s going to do it. And if this doesn’t work? Well, then she’ll cross that bridge when she gets there.

Veronica knocks on Logan’s door at the Grand, her mind briefly flashing to the last time she stood out here waiting for him to answer. After alterna-prom, her trying to extend an olive branch, Kendall Casablancas standing half naked behind him. More images she wishes that she could erase.

Logan opens the door wearing nothing but a towel around his waist.

“Seriously?” she asks when he smirks at her expression of surprise.

“You’re early,” he tells her, stepping aside to let her into his room.

“I’m antsy,” she responds, flopping down on his couch as he wanders back into his bedroom to finish getting ready. “Can you blame me?”

“You’re right. I should have anticipated this. I do know you.”

“Don’t placate me.”

He steps back out of his room wearing cargo shorts and pulling a t-shirt on over his head. “So, what are we doing today? Can we get frisky yet?”

She rolls her eyes as he joins her on the couch, propping his head up on his hand as he leans his elbow against the back of the couch. “Down boy. One privilege released at a time here.”

“You sure that’s how that works?”

She ignores his comment, reaching forward to place her hands on his knee. “I want to go up to the roof.”

He stares at her for a moment and the silence hangs in the air for an awkward amount of time before he finally asks, “Why?”

“Trying to face some of these ghosts that keep haunting me. Just – something my therapist said to me, I don’t know. I just want to sleep through the night again. Maybe it will help you too.”

Logan scrubs a hand through his hair. “Can we still go get ice cream after?”

She gives him a small smile. “Yes, I promise you a completely normal afternoon. Just give me this. And preferably don’t make me do it alone.”

His hands cover hers at his knee. “You’re not in this alone, I told you that.”

Veronica takes a deep breath, pushing herself to her feet. “All right, lead the way.”

He grabs his keycard and leads her to the stairwell with roof access. He freezes at the bottom of the steps, staring up at the door that exits out onto the roof. She senses his hesitation and reaches over to rub at his lower back.

“What’s wrong?” she asks.

“The last time I stood here, I heard you screaming. But at the time I wasn’t even sure that it was you, just had this sinking feeling that it was. Knowing what I know now, I think it was when Cassidy had your taser.”

The memory flashes across her mind and instinctively her hand moves to her arm where the taser had been. Maybe it was still too soon for this? Maybe they’re not ready.

“I hear that scream in my nightmares a lot,” Logan confesses softly.

_Oh._

Veronica leans into his side. “We don’t have to do this. We can just go get ice cream.”

“I want to see if it works,” he says, still staring up at the door. “If seeing you up on that roof alive and not bleeding helps me to sleep.”

She thinks to herself for probably the 100th time that she hates that she brought him into all of this and made her demons his own. How was she supposed to know? Cassidy didn’t have the gun out when she forwarded him that text. And he’d been acting pretty indifferent toward her since she interrupted him with Kendall that one morning, how was she supposed to know he still cared this much?

_Our story is epic._

“I can go first,” she suggests.

He shakes his head. “Together.”

Logan reaches for her hand, twining their fingers together, and leading her up the stairwell. He pushes open the door and they step out into the sunlight. It looks different up here during the day, less ominous and daunting.

_Just a rooftop, just a regular old –_

Her thought is interrupted by the sound of Logan’s sharp intake of breath. She follows his gaze to a small reddish-brown stain on the rooftop. Sure, it hasn’t rained for a couple of weeks now, but that can’t really be – someone would have cleaned it –

She leaves his side and kneels down beside the spot. She tries to remember where she was when it happened, what her view was of. But all she can picture is Cassidy holding the gun and Logan’s face as he ran to her to apply pressure to her wound.

“That’s where it happened,” he tells her. “That’s where you were.”

She lays down next to the spot and stares up at the too blue sky without a single cloud in it. It’s June and already hot and she’s almost worried they’ll have to come back up here at night for this to work. She feels Logan lay down beside her, but she doesn’t turn her head to look at him.

“There aren’t any ghosts in the daylight,” she says.

“I think there are plenty.”

That gets her to look at him. He’s staring at the sky, his hands clasped over his stomach.

_He needs her. Up here alive and not bleeding._

She rolls herself on top of him, straddling his hips and blocking his view of the sky. Her long hair falls over her shoulder and brushes against his chin as she leans forward. His hands move to grip at her hips.

“I thought we weren’t doing this yet,” he tries to say teasingly, but she can see the way his smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes.

“We’re on the roof where I was shot,” she says, sitting up and tugging at the neckline of her shirt to reveal her still healing scar to him. Another sharp inhale of breath enters his lungs as he lets go of one of her hips to reach for it. She holds his hand to her chest, keeping her eyes locked on his. “I survived. I survived because of you. No matter what you see in your nightmares, we get our chance at a happy ending. We’ve been through hell, but we’re still here. We’re still here.”

Logan pushes himself up into a seated position and she remains straddling his lap. “I don’t want to be haunted by your pain anymore. That’s the ghost I keep trying to run from.”

Hearing him say that hurts more than the bullet wound does at this point. Her pain shouldn’t be his to shoulder the burden. She grabs both sides of his face and pulls his mouth to hers. It’s the first time that they’ve kissed since she broke up with him all those months ago. He tastes just like she remembered as he opens his mouth to her. He holds her against him just like she remembered as his hands press into her lower back and her hips rock forward.

She shakes her head when she forces herself to pull away. “Gotta stop before I don’t want to.”

His thumbs brush against her back. “If I could just get you to moan, maybe that would stick in my head instead.”

“You already know what that sounds like,” she tells him, recalling how intense their previous make out sessions had gotten. He’d gotten her to moan before. More than once.

“I need a refresher.”

She crosses her arms over her chest. “You want me to fake it, is that what you’re asking?”

“Can you even do that convincingly?”

She huffs, leaning forward again. “Keep in mind, I’m only doing this to help you sleep at night and because I feel responsible in the first place.”

“Okay, now I’m intrigued.”

She shakes her head and closes her eyes thinking only Logan Echolls could get her to do this. She lets her mind wander to one specific evening in his Xterra, the first time she’d let his wandering hands slip under her shirt and even under her bra. She thinks about his fingers dancing over her skin, his mouth on her neck at that spot right below her ear that he _knows_ drives her crazy, her hips with a mind of their own rocking up against his…and she moans. Does it just sitting on his lap thinking about him up on this godforsaken rooftop.

She opens her eyes slowly, almost too embarrassed to look at him. But he’s looking at her nearly slack-jawed and she can’t help but smirk at him.

“Get _that_ to stick in your dreams,” she teases.

“Oh great, now I’ll wake up at 2 AM with a hard-on instead.”

“An improvement.”

He’s shaking his head, but he can’t stop touching her. His fingers have now migrated under her shirt and brush against her bare skin.

“All right well now that we’ve accomplished _that_ ,” Logan starts. “Didn’t we come up here to fix you?”

She sighs, leaning backward so the heels of her hands dig into the rough surface of the rooftop. She looks back up at the sky. “I don’t know if I can be fixed. One near-death experience too many, you know?”

“Too many ghosts to face?”

She nods, returning her gaze to his. “Knock one down and another one pops right up.”

“Sounds like a game of Whack-a-Mole.”

That gets her to laugh. He’s always so damn good at that: getting her to laugh when she doesn’t want to. Maybe that’s why she loves him.

_Oh_.

She hasn’t told him that yet. Hasn’t said the words out loud. Does he already know without her saying it? She should say it. But the words get trapped on her tongue and he thinks she’s getting tripped up over his ill-timed joke or her ghosts and not because _she loves him_.

“How many ghosts we looking at here?” he asks. “Enough to warrant a call to Ghostbusters?”

Another joke. He’s trying to get her to laugh again.

“Are we counting ghosts or near-death experiences?”

“Is there a difference?”

“Yeah,” she nods. “Lilly never tried to kill me.”

“Okay, so what all are we dealing with here? Cassidy. Lilly…my father?”

She gives him a weak smile and nods again. “Yeah that memory of being trapped in that burning fridge and thinking I was going to die has come back. That’s an old one. And the guilt nightmares about not being on that bus when it crashed? Those are back too with a new twist with the knowledge that Cassidy was responsible. Starting to feel like Neptune has a hit out on me.”

“If Neptune itself is your ghost, you may want to reconsider your admittance to Stanford.”

Veronica looks to the sky again. “I can’t afford it. Maybe after a year at Hearst, I can reapply for scholarships, but for now? Neptune still has its hooks in me.”

“I can –”

“Logan, you’re not going to pay my tuition.”

“I owe you Poker winnings.”

“Not $54,000 worth.”

He hums, his fingers now absentmindedly tracing over her ankle bone.

“And I’m not leaving you,” she adds.

“You don’t have to worry about me, Veronica. I’ll be fine.”

He’s lying and she knows it. The brave face to cover up the moments of vulnerability. They both do it. They’re more alike than either of them realizes. But she knows, she just _knows_ , that she can’t leave him for upstate come August. It’s approaching faster than they’re ready for. And he may _claim_ that he’ll be fine, but she won’t be. No random assigned roommate will understand all of the reasons why she can’t seem to sleep at night.

“Liar,” she says quietly, calling him out on his bluff.

A smile twitches at his lips but he doesn’t say anything. For whatever reason his gaze is still trained on his fingertips against her ankle and the mindless shapes he continues to trace.

“You okay?” she asks, gently.

It scares her when he’s quiet. She’s known him long enough, knows him well enough, to know that something’s wrong when he isn’t his usual chatty self. He sighs, removing his hand from her ankle, and mirroring her position leaning back against the rooftop. Her legs are still tangled with his and she finds that she’s oddly content to be sitting with him here like this.

“There’s still a lot we’re not talking about,” he says quietly.

He has ghosts in the daylight. Ghosts made up of _her_ pain. The last serious comments he’d made before she tried to cheer him up and led them into a very innuendo heavy conversation. And then he tried to turn the focus back on her and her own struggles. He never got to expand on his initial thoughts.

“If you want to talk, I’ll listen,” she tells him.

He shakes his head, staring up at the sky.

“Logan –”

“Do you ever think you’d be better off never having known me?”

He blurts it out in a rush and she stares back at him, wide-eyed. He’s still not looking at her.

“I’m sorry, _what_?”

He’s shaking his head. “I do. If we hadn’t moved here in 6th grade, Lilly would still be alive. She would have been with you at Shelly’s that night, you wouldn’t have been drugged. You wouldn’t have this nightmare about getting trapped in burning appliances. And without Lilly’s death, would you have honestly turned into a young P.I.? Investigating this bus crush when you would have been in the limo with your friends the whole time and your dad was still the sheriff who would have handled the investigation the right way in the first place?”

She pushes herself up onto her knees between his legs, cupping his face in her hands so he’ll look at her. “ _None_ of that is on you. It’s on Aaron. All of it.”

“I brought him into your lives.”

“No,” she’s shaking her head as though doing so will shake these thoughts right out of his. “No. Do you know how lost I’d be without you?”

“You wouldn’t need me. You’d still have Lilly. And Duncan.”

“ _No_.”

How does she get him to see? How does she make him understand?

“You’re my best friend, remember? We just talked about this last week. Don’t you dare try and erase your presence from my life. Logan, I –” She’s going to say it. The words aren’t going to get trapped on her tongue this time. “I’m in love with you. Aaron did a lot of horrible, terrible things that I will never forgive him for, dead or not, but he brought you to me. And I need you in my life.”

She’s crying and now she can see the sheen of tears in his eyes and _fuck_ she doesn’t know how to fix this. He’s the one who’d be better off without her. All of this pain is _because of her_. That thought catches her in the chest and she lets go of his face with one hand to rub at her scar. She needs to fix this, she needs to give him an out.

“I love you,” she says it again. “But you’re the one who’s better off without me. I dragged you into all of this. All of this is because of me.”

Logan pulls her against him so fast, it nearly catches her off guard. He’s crying into her hair and she’s crying into his shirt and god, how did this become such a mess? Is this where talking and sharing your feelings is supposed to get people? Is this what normally happens when you try to face your fears?

His fists bunch up the back of her shirt as he tries to pull her in closer. “You love me?” It’s a whisper into her ear and all of it sends a shiver down her spine.

She nods against his chest. “I do.”

He kisses her temple, straightening up a little so he can look at her. “I’m not better off without you, Veronica. If anything, you make me better.”

She snorts at that, wiping at her eyes. “If this is your definition of better, we’re going to need to take a look at what you’re comparing it to.”

He angles her head up towards his with his index finger. He leans in and kisses her, all soft and slow. Delicate almost. But not in a way where there’s no passion or fire behind it. She feels it, his love for her, his need to be loved by her. And _oh_ , she does, she really fucking does –

“Hey!”

They break apart, startled, at the sudden additional voice.

“You kids can’t be up here! Especially not doing that.”

They both turn and stare up at the hotel security guard looming over them. She feels her cheeks flush with embarrassment and the way Logan pulls her in a little closer like he’s trying to shield her. And then she starts to feel her embarrassment churn into rage the longer she stares at this man, up here trying to _protect_ or some shit, when there was not a soul to be found up here _that night_.

“Sorry, sir, we’ll leave,” Logan tells him, pushing himself to standing and helping Veronica up.

She should leave it at that, she knows she should. Just take Logan’s hand and let him lead her back down to his room. But she wouldn’t be herself if she was capable of leaving things alone.

“Where were you three weeks ago?” she asks, sizing up the security guard.

“Veronica.”

She hears the warning in Logan’s tone and ignores it.

“If we’re not supposed to be up here, if _people_ aren’t supposed to be up here, why is the door unlocked? Where were you three weeks ago to kick people out that night, huh? Where were you when I got shot? Where were you when my shooter ended his life by stepping off that ledge?” she asks, gesturing behind her. “There was a fucking gun shot and no one showed up. Not until my boyfriend here managed to call 911. Maybe the hotel knows that and that’s why checking the rooftop is now part of your daily surveillance. A lot of fucking good that does me now, huh?”

The guard goes pale and she shakes her head, grabbing Logan’s hand and pulling on him to leave.

“Oh, and while you’re up here,” she adds, turning back around. “You might want to find someone to finish cleaning up the rest of my blood.”

She gestures to the small reddish-brown stain still on the rooftop before turning on her heel and descending back down the stairs with Logan stumbling along behind her.

* * *

He watches her. Watches the way she licks at her ice cream cone, trying to catch all of the drips before they melt onto her hand. Watches as her tongue pokes out to lick off the ones she missed. He lets his mind drift for a moment, lets himself be a regular teenage boy imagining that his girlfriend’s mouth was…elsewhere. He lets himself revel in the fact that she loves him. Veronica Mars is in love with him and is apparently capable of doing very dirty things with her tongue.

He gives himself this time, two minutes maybe, before his mind drifts back to her yelling at the security guard. He’d wondered how long it would take her anger to come out. Her fear and her sadness have let it lay dormant for too long. He should have known she was on the edge of an outburst. Logan’s just glad he wasn’t on the receiving end of it. He’s already been there before, and he knows she can be relentless and tough as nails.

That’s his girl. Tiny. Blonde. Tongue that looks like it could destroy a man. Armor made of steel.

It’s bad that she turns him on when she’s angry, right? Is that why he spent so much time these past two years trying to get her riled up?

“You’re watching me,” she tells him when he’s been quiet for too long and his own ice cream has basically melted to soup in its bowl.

“I’m watching your tongue,” he corrects.

Her eyes widen and she chucks a napkin at him. “Pervert.”

“Normal teenager things,” he points out, tossing the napkin back at her.

She’s down to the cone now and bites into it with a crunch. She overexaggerates licking the melted ice cream that trickles down the side of it. He groans in response. She’s going to be the death of him. Truly.

“You want to talk about what happened back there on that roof?” he asks, picking up his spoon to make an equally sexual gesture with his tongue.

She narrows her eyes at him, over his question or his tongue he’s not sure. He too has a very gifted tongue he would very much like to use on her.

“Which part?” she asks.

“Oh I don’t know, we have a lot to work with here. Neither of us are sleeping. Still. You can moan like you’re turned on practically on command. You’re in love with me. We both think we’re ruining each other’s lives. And I’m pretty sure you almost punched a security guard.”

She groans, crunching into another bite of the cone. “I wasn’t going to hit him.”

“Still…”

She’s quiet, finishing off the rest of her ice cream cone before splaying her hands flat against the table. “The person I want to yell at is dead. He took my virginity without my consent, or maybe Duncan did, who really knows what order that all happened in. He took my friend Meg from me. He tried to take my dad from me. He tried to kill me. And then he took himself out of the whole damn equation so I can’t even yell at him. That’s why I’m stuck chasing these ghosts. That’s all that’s left.”

He hates this. Hates that this kid they both grew up around and welcomed into their homes has become such a terror in her life. Hates that neither of them can do anything to confront him about it. Hates that she doesn’t even know who technically took her virginity because of some drugs he himself was dumb enough to bring to some party.

He drops his spoon back into his half-eaten bowl of ice cream and reaches for her hand. “I keep thinking about the last conversation I had with my dad. Ran into him in the lobby at The Grand. He was smug as hell trying to tell me that I’d be seeing more of him and that he was back in control of the money. I blew him off. Had I known that would be the last time I ever saw him, I would have yelled and handed his ass to him right in front of everyone. Just let everyone within earshot know what he did to me, what he did to my mom, what he did to Lilly. Aaron Echolls, the abusive, murderer, movie star: straight from the mouth of one of his own victims. I’m stuck trying to kill a ghost too.”

And now he’s laid it all out on the table for her. She’d heard Trina’s off-handed comment about his accusations against his father from childhood: broken noses and cigarette burns. And she has to have seen some of his scars, felt them even, from the days they used to fool around in the backseat of his car. But he’s never directly brought it up with her. Never come right out and said that Aaron hit him.

“All the more reason for needing each other, huh?” she asks softly, squeezing his hand. “If you start trying to refer to us as the Ghostbusters though, I will be forced to pretend that I don’t know you.”

He sees that teasing smile creep back across her features.

“I’ll just tell people you’re in love with me anyway,” he teases back.

“I’ll deny it.”

“Please, like they’ll buy that with the way that you look at me.”

“How do I look at you?”

“Like you’re in love with me.”

She shakes her head, dropping her gaze to the table. “You didn’t even have that information up until an hour ago.”

“I didn’t need you to say it in order to tell.”

She huffs. “There’s no way I’m that obvious.”

“Oh, you are. But don’t worry, it doesn’t carry over to your P.I. skills.”

She huffs again. “And remind me why it is exactly that I love you?”

“I bought you ice cream.”

“Oh, yes of course, you feed me. That makes sense. I’m a loyal bitch.”

He bursts out laughing at her double entendre, squeezing her hand again. She shakes her head trying to hide her own smile. Veronica shreds the napkin they’d been tossing back and forth at each other into confetti-like pieces, before looking back up to meet his gaze.

“When did it start?” she asks. “Aaron that is. If you don’t mind me asking.”

Logan sighs, her hand finding his again on the table. He sweeps his thumb over her knuckles. “I was seven, I think. The first time.”

She closes her eyes and shakes her head at the thought. “We may not be able to confront them, our ghosts, but at the very least, they can’t hurt us ever again.”


	6. Chapter 6

He manages to sleep that night. A full six hours straight, which was sadly an improvement, before the sun started to shine through the curtains and he gave up trying to block the light out with his pillow. Progress, he thinks. Not even with his therapist, but with Veronica. She’s keeping him sane. He just wishes he could do the same for her.

“How’d you sleep last night?” he asks when he calls her that morning. Logan leans back against his headboard, stretching his legs out in front of him while he waits for her reply.

She sighs into the phone. “Sleep? What’s that?”

His heart aches for her. How is it fair that she’s healing him, but he can’t manage to help heal her?

“You want to talk about it?” he asks. He’s been trying not to push her, but she’s been opening up to him more and more lately. He wonders if he has her therapy sessions to thank.

Another sigh on her end. “Another iteration of Shelly’s party. This time people were watching it happen, but nobody bothered to step in to stop it. Maybe that’s what actually happened. It’s not like I remember any of it. It’s not like anyone at that party actually cared about me.”

He feels the knot form in the pit of his stomach. He’d been there. He’d watched people mess with her when he thought she was just drunk off her ass. He’d never bothered to intervene. He’d encouraged it even, participated.

“I should have been looking out for you,” he tells her. “I’m sorry.”

He can practically see her shaking her head when she answers him. “I’m not your responsibility, Logan.”

“But you were my friend, I should have –”

He can’t finish the sentence, the words getting trapped on his tongue. It’s not the first time he’s felt guilty for pushing her away that year, and it certainly won’t be the last. 

“I don’t want you to blame yourself for this,” she says. “The drugs weren’t meant for me. You weren’t trying to hurt me. We’ve already talked about this.”

“It’s not about the drugs, Veronica, I –” he scrubs a hand over his face. “I saw you at that party. I saw that you weren’t…yourself. But I lost track of you and…”

“Don’t,” she cuts him off. “The only person I blame is Cassidy. I don’t need you getting wrapped up in what if scenarios here. Enough of my demons are yours right now, you don’t need this one too.”

He wants to go back to that night and look out for her. He wants to go back to the night on the roof and act faster and prevent her from getting shot. He wants to do something to bring back her happiness, more than just a flicker of it at a time between nightmares and heavy heart to hearts.

“Come to the beach with me.”

“What?” he hears the confusion in her voice.

“Normal teenage stuff. The beach. Today. Let’s go.”

“Logan –”

“Nothing super crazy. I’m not asking to teach you how to surf or to run laps along the shoreline. Just sit in the sun with me. Enjoy the sound of the waves crashing against the shore. Let me try and cheer you up. As much as I want to, I can’t erase any of the trauma from your life. But I intend to keep trying to help you move forward.”

He’s met with silence on the other line and he’s worried momentarily that the call dropped. “Veronica? You there?”

“I love you.” It almost sounds like she’s crying as she says it. “For all this talk about how I show up for you, you show up for me too. And forgot about right after Lilly died, okay? That year…it wasn’t your fault, Logan. It was just…grief. But now, you’ve checked in on me every day since it happened. And I appreciate that. I appreciate you.”

He’ll never get tired of hearing her tell him that she loves him. There’s no possible way that will ever get old.

“So, pick you up in an hour?” he asks.

She laughs through the other line, the hint of tears still in her voice. “Yeah, I’ll be ready.”

“Excellent. And Veronica? I love you too.”

* * *

She could get used to this. The warm summer sun warming her skin, the steady rhythm of the ocean crashing against the shore, the feeling of Logan’s fingers tangled through her hair as he absentmindedly plays with it as she leans her back against his propped-up legs. She can’t remember the last time she felt this at peace, this calm. No one’s out to get her out here. It’s just the two of them and the ocean.

“How did you manage to find an empty beach without any other beach goers?” she asks without opening her eyes from beneath her sunglasses.

Logan hums, his fingers twisting with her hair, almost feeling like he’s trying to figure out how to braid it. “The waves out here are shit. It’s too rocky. And it’s sort of off the beaten path by Neptune’s standards. I come here a lot when I need to think. Figured you might need it too.”

“What are you trying to do?” she asks when he pulls at her hair a little too hard.

“I have no idea,” he laughs, his fingers still trapped in her hair. “Why, did that hurt? Sorry, I can stop.”

She shakes her head back and forth slowly, enjoying far too much the tingling sensation having her hair played with brings to her scalp. “No, don’t stop. Just don’t pull so hard.”

“Out of context, all of that was very dirty.”

She doesn’t need to see his face to know the smirk he has plastered on it right now. She nudges his shin gently with her elbow. “Use it _in_ context then.”

“But it’s so much more fun the other way.”

“What even would you be pulling on?” she asks, only half joking in her question. “Isn’t that sort of my job in this whole thing?”

Logan clucks his tongue. “Well you see, Veronica, I do this one thing with my mouth involving your –”

“Okay, you don’t need to keep going I get the picture,” she assures him, already feeling the heat burn between her legs at the mental image.

“I mean, I can always show you –”

She turns to look up at him, her hair slipping out of his fingers. “One of these days, yes, I will let you show me. For now, there’s sort of a wound in my chest still trying to heal.”

He smirks down at her. “Damnit, Beaver, still finding ways to ruin our sex life.”

“How did he ruin it before?”

“He walked in on us at my house that one time, remember? Dick was with him? We were on the couch and my hands were up your shirt and –”

“Okay, yeah, yes I remember that,” she nods, breaking her gaze away from his when the blush colors her cheeks.

“I don’t know why you’re embarrassed,” Logan laughs. “I was the one with you.”

She shakes her head settling back against his legs. “Sex is weird for me, you know? Especially now, knowing that I –” She can’t say it, still can’t verbalize it for it what it was. “And Duncan was…I don’t know. He was sweet mostly. I was just so easily hung up on the fact that I don’t remember our first time together. Maybe that’s why there was never a, uh, a fire there. But you – you used to get me _so_ worked up.”

He picks up a section of her hair once more, aimlessly twirling the strands around a finger. “I look forward to doing that again. When you’re ready, obviously. I’m not in any rush, no matter how innuendo filled our conversations get.”

She smiles, even though she knows he can’t see it, and lets her eyes slip closed once more. Who knew that things could feel so simple and easy with Logan? She supposes they’d been like this last summer, in the stolen moments they got between his trial and summer school and his dangerous ‘09er war plans. He’d loved her back then, even if she was too afraid to admit to that herself. But things feel different this time around.

She trusts him now, she thinks. She can see the old Logan within him again; the one who used to make her laugh, not the one who used to make her cry.

“You were my first kiss, do you remember that?” she asks, her fingers curling into the sand and letting the grains slip through them.

He’s laughing again, purposely pulling on her hair. “I forgot about that. At Lilly’s 13th birthday party, right? Spin the bottle?”

She hums, nodding. “She was mad at me for like two weeks afterwards. She wanted to be the one to land on you.” 

“Well, she got me eventually,” he says, his voice sounding far away like its trapped in a memory.

“So did I.”

It took them long enough, but he’s hers now. She finally got the guy.

He lets her hair slip out of his fingers. “Is the eventually tacked on to that one too? Did you want me before?”

She shrugs, turning herself around to face him, and digging her toes into the sand on either side of his hips. “You’re the not the only one who had a crush at 12.”

Logan grins at that. “Seems like another lifetime ago.”

“It might as well be.”

“So, why’d you let her have me?” he asks.

She shrugs again. “It was Lilly. Lilly got what Lilly wanted. And besides, you chose her too.”

“I didn’t think you were an option. I mean the way Duncan was always around…”

“He was my best friend’s brother. Of course he was always around.”

He sighs, shifting his gaze up to look out at the ocean. “Do you ever miss him?”

“Maybe a little,” she answers honestly. “I think it’s more the memory of him that I miss than anything else. I mean he was my first…a lot of things, but I think I’d have a lot harder time with it if you were the one who had to flee the country with your love child.”

There had been a time when she thought she loved Duncan. Back when she was younger and more naïve and convinced that he was the perfect boyfriend. And maybe she did love him, but it wasn’t like this. It wasn’t like how she feels about Logan. Watching Duncan leave had been hard but losing Logan like that would have been impossible. She’s not even sure where along the way she fell for him this hard. But wasn’t that the thing about near-death experiences? They make you reevaluate what’s important in your life. And Logan was definitely important in hers.

“Do you ever miss Kendall?” she asks, biting her lip, almost nervous to hear his response. She knows he didn’t love her, but the sex must have been…

“Not the same thing,” Logan says, shifting his gaze back to her. “That was nothing. It meant nothing, I felt nothing.”

“But you kept going back to her.”

“Horny teenage boy,” he mutters, looking back to the ocean. “She wasn’t even my type.”

“Okay, what about Hannah?” she asks quietly. “Or were you really only dating her to get to her dad?”

He fidgets with the towel they have laid out under them, still avoiding looking at her. “That was part of it, I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t a big part of it, but I had other reasons too.”

“Such as?”

Now he looks at her, meeting her eyes behind sunglasses. “She reminded me of you. The you that I knew before Lilly died.”

She knows she’s changed. She’s well aware of the fact that she doesn’t know how to be that girl anymore. She wouldn’t want to, even if she remembered how.

“You got a problem with current Veronica?” she asks, trying, and failing she thinks, to hide the worry in her voice.

He shakes his head. “No, not what I meant by that.”

“Then, what –”

“Are you going to deny that you weren’t a completely different person three years ago?”

“I’m not denying anything. I _know_ I’ve changed. She was a different person. She still had a mom. Her best friend wasn’t dead. Back then her biggest fear was of what other people thought of her.”

“What is it now?”

“Losing someone else I love.”

Logan leans forward, reaching out and skimming his hands up her thighs. She thinks he meant it to be comforting, but it comes across to her as sexual and she can’t keep her mind from wandering to thoughts of what it would be like if his hands went up even higher.

“I guess, seeing the old you in Hannah as it were,” he starts. “You were happier back then. You didn’t hate me. It was nice being around someone so…”

“Yellow cotton?”

“What?”

She shakes her head, closing her eyes behind her sunglasses. “Something Lilly told me once.”

“She compared you to yellow cotton?”

“No,” Veronica laughs. “Not exactly. She told me I wasn’t a yellow cotton dress. Told me that I was red satin.”

“Do you own any red satin?” he asks and she can tell his mind is going straight to picturing lingerie. _Horny teenage boy_.

“Also no. But I did own a yellow cotton dress. Guess I still do. I just haven’t worn it since I was 15. That’s not me anymore. And not just because Lilly said it shouldn’t be.”

Logan’s hands skim back down her thighs, resting on her knees. “She hadn’t been hurt by the world yet.”

“Me or Hannah?”

“Both. That innocence of not knowing heartbreak, of not knowing pain. Of only seeing the unfairness in not being able to go out with friends because your homework isn’t done, instead of the unfairness of a life being taken too soon.”

She hums, chewing on her lower lip. “You’ve changed too, you know that? Losing Lilly didn’t just change me.”

“Do you have a problem with current Logan?”

“Not today.”

“I’m behaving, aren’t I?” he asks, waggling his eyebrows.

She pushes herself forward so she can rest her hands on top of his at her knees, bringing along some grains of sand with her in the process.

“Current Logan is a lot more like old Logan,” she tells him. “You’ve reverted back a lot easier than I have.”

“Jackass Logan still exists,” he says with a shrug. “He just doesn’t want to be a jackass to you anymore.”

She smirks at him. “What do you think Jackass Logan would think about you being in love with me now?”

“Inevitability.”

She snorts at that, pushing his hands off her knees while he laughs. “What part of breaking my headlights screams I’m going to love this girl someday?”

“He was a jackass, he wasn’t stupid.”

“So, what are you saying? You and I were meant to be all along? From the moments of middle school crushes and first kisses to this?”

“If the romcom storyline fits.”

She laughs at that. “We’re living a romcom? And here I was convinced we were trapped in some horror film.”

“That’s just the subplot.”

“Any chance that will be wrapping up soon?”

He nods, a smile spreading across his face. “I hear that staring college is like turning over a new leaf. A blank page just waiting for fresh ink. A bigger pool filled with a bunch of people who know absolutely nothing about your past.”

“Not all complete strangers I hope.”

“No, you’re allowed a few familiar faces. Helps advance the main plot.”

She shakes her head. “I’d like to yell at the writers for developing this horrible horror subplot in the first place.”

“It’s Hollywood, babe. What do you expect?”

She laughs again, crawling toward him on the blanket and turning her back to him so she can lean against his chest. “As long as we get that fairytale ending. You can afford a castle now, right?”

He joins her in her laughter, dropping his head to place a kiss to her temple. “Don’t give me any ideas. I’m still trying to justify the speed boat.”

His arms drape around her as they stare out at the ocean together. Peace. Serenity. Maybe she’ll finally sleep tonight.


	7. Chapter 7

Veronica claims that she finally managed to sleep through the night without being haunted by any nightmares. And yet here she is now, halfway through the movie they’re watching, fast asleep curled up against him on his couch. Logan figures she has weeks’ worth of sleep to catch up on at this point, so he leaves her be, even if his arm is starting to fall asleep underneath her.

He feels like he can protect her when she’s here with him like this. He’s not entirely sure _what_ he’s protecting her from at this point, but he feels like she’s safe here when it’s just the two of them. Her, the girl he’s been mesmerized by since he was 12 years old. Him, the boy she’s secretly had a crush on for just as long. The two of them, in love and determined to finally make this thing between them work.

He never wants to know life without her. He hopes that she feels the same way.

There’s a knock on the door to his hotel room. He doesn’t remember ordering any room service, but when the knocking persists, he figures it’s likely not any of the hotel staff. Logan slowly slides himself out from under Veronica, trying not to wake her and moving a pillow under her head in his absence. He moves over to the door, ready to shush whoever’s on the other side of it. He takes off the chain lock and pulls the door open to reveal none other than Dick Casablancas.

His friend looks rough, like he too hasn’t been sleeping, battling his own demons. Demons the three of them in this room seem to share at this point.

“I’ve been trying to call you,” Logan says quietly, still trying not to wake Veronica. “For weeks now.”

“Haven’t really felt like talking,” Dick answers, staring down at his shoes.

He gets that. He does. But if he’s learned anything in therapy, anything from being with Veronica these past couple of weeks, it’s that talking helps.

“Is she okay?” Dick asks. “Ronnie I mean.”

“She’s getting there,” Logan says, looking back over his shoulder. She’s still fast asleep on the couch.

“Shit, is she here right now? Did you two finally reconcile?”

Logan nods. “Yes…to both.”

Dick shakes his head, scrubbing a hand through his already messy hair. “I didn’t know Beaver was capable of that, you know? I always joked that he was a little twisted in the head, but I never meant – I never thought –”

“Hey, none of us saw it coming. None of us thought he would do something like that.”

“Yeah, but –” he runs a hand through his hair again. “He was my kid brother. And I was so mean to him and now…”

“You can’t blame yourself for his actions. You didn’t cause any of this, Dick.”

His friend is quiet for a moment, his gaze still trained on the floor. “I heard you were there. You were on the roof when it all happened.”

The memory flashes across his vision. Beaver with the gun, aiming it at him. Beaver shooting Veronica and her falling with a strangled gasp. Beaver standing on that ledge and stepping off. The sound of the car alarm. The feel of her blood.

“Yeah, Veronica asked for my help,” he answers quietly.

“Was he – was he terrorizing her? Why did he want to shoot her? Was it an accident? Is that why he felt guilty enough to –”

_Fuck_. He doesn’t know if Dick knows about Woody. Or what he knows about the bus crash. Or what he knows about that night at Shelly’s party. He doesn’t think his friend has any context as to why his little brother did what he did. He just knows there are likely various accusations against him and he’s not alive to explain himself.

“She um,” Logan starts. This isn’t his story to tell. He’d called 911, that was his part in all of this. “She found out some things about him that he didn’t like her knowing.”

“Like what, man? What did she know?”

He feels the gentle pressure of her fingertips at the small of his back. He hadn’t even heard her walk over here, but now she’s ducking under his arm which is still holding the door open and curling into his side. She looks up at Dick, her chin jutted out in something that almost reads as defiance.

“Ronnie,” Dick says nodding and taking a step back like he’s trying to distance himself from her. “I’m glad to see that you’re okay.”

“I’ve been better,” she says softly.

“Uh, Dick’s here looking for some answers,” Logan explains, smoothing down the back of her hair with his free hand. “I figure it’s your story to tell. If you want to.”

She nods slowly and steps aside as though she’s ushering him into the hotel room. Dick and Logan follow her back over to the couch where the end credits from the movie are starting to roll across the screen on the TV. Logan sits beside her, his hand on her knee, trying to offer her some form of support while she relives all of this again. She takes a deep breath and starts explaining everything: Woody, the bus crash, the plane. But she leaves out the Chlamydia. Leaves out Shelly’s party. It’s the same version she’s told her dad, the same version she’s told the sheriff’s department. It leaves him wondering if he’s the only person who knows the full truth. What version do Wallace and Mac know? What about her therapist?

“I don’t buy it,” Dick says, shaking his head once she’s done. “He wasn’t like that. It’s not like he tortured animals or anything as a kid. Why would he – I don’t buy it.”

“It’s what happened,” Veronica tells him. “Why would I lie about this?”

“My brother wasn’t a murderer.”

She stares at him long and hard for a moment before pushing herself to her feet. “Okay.”

Logan shoots her a questioning look as she wanders away from them before he hears the sound of her closing the bathroom door.

“Beaver wouldn’t –” Dick starts again.

“But he did,” Logan tells him. “I know it doesn’t make sense. Vee and I have been trying to wrap our heads around it for weeks, but it’s what happened. I guess you never really know what’s going on with a person. Even Mac has said she had no idea he was dealing with any of this.”

“It doesn’t make sense. He wasn’t – how did things get so messed up?”

They’ve been asking themselves that for weeks. There is no answer to all of this pain. All they can do is try to press on and move forward. Healing is all that’s left.

“Dick, I’m sorry. None of this should have happened.”

He’s scrubbing a hand through his hair again. “I’m gonna – I should go. Your girlfriend doesn’t seem too happy that I’m here.”

“It’s not you,” Logan assures him.

“Yeah,” Dick says, standing up. “It’s my brother.”

“Look, don’t disappear on me again, okay?” Logan asks. “I’m still your friend. I’m still here for you.”

Dick pauses, his back still turned to him as he’s heading in the direction of the door. “You couldn’t stop him from jumping?”

_Give me one reason not to._

“Veronica,” he starts, rubbing at the back of his head. “There was so much blood. She was dying.” He shakes his head, trying to chase away the memory. “I told him not to jump. Asked him to call 911, hoping maybe it would distract him. But he’d already made up his mind, Dick. He wasn’t willing to face the consequences of his actions.”

“I think uh – I think I’m going to go stay with my dad for a while. In the Caymans. Don’t be surprised if you don’t hear from me for a bit.”

“Dick –”

“Tell her I’m sorry, okay? Tell her I’m glad he was always a crappy shot no matter how many times Dad took us to the shooting range.”

Logan lets him leave at a loss for words. This is why he liked it better when it was just the two of them, just him and Veronica. They could deal with each other’s crap, but introduce a third party into the situation? Everything always seems to go to shit.

He heads over to the bathroom and knocks on the door. “Veronica? Dick left.”

She opens the door a couple seconds later, wiping at her eyes with a Kleenex. “I’m sorry. I just couldn’t –”

“I know,” he says, tugging her into his arms. “I know.”

“I don’t blame him. He knows that, right?”

“I think he’s just lost. It’s a lot of information to take in all at once.”

She nods against his chest.

“Why did you leave out the part about the Chlamydia?” he asks, nearly holding his breath while he waits for her response. He’s been trying so damn hard not to push her lately.

Her hands fists into his shirt. “When I first asked Cassidy about Shelly’s party toward the end of junior year, he told me that Dick had been trying to talk him into – into having his way – but I don’t know if he was lying. I don’t feel like I can trust anything he’s ever told me.”

He holds her tighter, wishing again that he had paid more attention to her that night. Wishing that he had kept better track of his _friends_. “How many people know that you were raped?”

“You’re looking at them.”

_Their secret_ , he thinks. _She won’t talk about it with anyone else_.

“Why do trust me with this when you won’t disclose to anyone else?”

“Why did you tell me that Aaron used to hit you when you won’t tell anyone else?”

To be fair, he had tried to tell Trina growing up. She just never believed him.

“The county fair is next weekend,” Logan tells her, changing the subject as he runs a hand up and down her back. “We can go so I can win you that stuffed animal you’ve had your eye on.”

She looks up at him, a small smile on her lips. “Normal teenager stuff, huh?”

“Yeah, we need to get better at making a dent in our to do list.”

She smiles again before burying her head back against his chest with a heavy sigh. “I don’t think I’m going to be nightmare free tonight.”

He grimaces, thinking again about the feel of her blood on his hands. “Yeah, same here.”

* * *

_She watches him die. Watches Aaron beat the crap out of him while Cassidy holds her down and forces her to watch. It doesn’t make sense. None of this happened. None of this is real. But it_ feels _real. The fingertip bruises she can feel being left behind on her arms from where Cassidy grips her too tightly. The sickening sound of Aaron’s knuckles connecting against Logan’s skull. The sound of her cries, her pleas, to make all of this stop. The vision of Logan’s limp, bloodied, and lifeless form crumpled before her. Cassidy still won’t let her go to him. She’s trapped. Helpless. The bile rising from the pit of her stomach. She can’t do this. She can’t. She can’t._

Veronica sits bolt upright in bed, immediately reaching for her trashcan to retch into it. That one was too much. She can’t stomach watching that again.

She pads into her bathroom, staring at her reflection in the mirror. Her complexion is pale and the bags under her eyes have grown impossibly darker. There’s a sheen of sweat on her brow and her hands tremble as she moves to scrape her hair up into a ponytail. She doesn’t have the energy in her to fully wash her hair right now.

She was supposed to hang out with Wallace and Mac today, but Logan…she needs Logan. She just needs to see that he’s okay and all in one piece. She needs to see his smile, hear his laugh. She needs him not to be dead.

Her friends won’t mind if her boyfriend tags along today, will they? She promises she won’t ignore them. She just needs him next to her. She needs to know that he’s safe.

And she knows she’s being irrational. Of course he’s safe. Aaron is dead. Cassidy is dead. They’re the survivors here. So, why does she worry so damn much when he’s not in her immediate line of vision?

Veronica steps into the shower, checking her arms for the fingertip bruises from her dream. Of course they’re not there, it wasn’t real, no matter how hard her subconscious tries to convince her otherwise. She’s not scheduled to see her therapist until tomorrow, but maybe she should try and call her today? She just can’t seem to shake this one.

By the time she heads out to the kitchen to pour herself a cup of coffee her father has already likely brewed, she finds Logan sitting at the kitchen island with her dad. She does a double take, the weirdness of the scene coupled with the hauntings from last night’s nightmare throwing her for a loop.

At the way Logan exhales when he sees her, she guesses his nightmares were pretty awful last night too. She pours herself the coffee she was after before walking over to Logan’s side and letting him drape an arm around her waist.

“You two aren’t conspiring against me, I hope,” she says, lifting the coffee mug to her lips.

“Oh not at all, honey,” Keith says, drumming his fingers along the morning paper spread out before him. “Just planning your wedding is all.”

She nearly chokes on her coffee.

“Relax,” Logan laughs, rubbing at the small of her back. “He’s joking.”

“I’m aware,” she says, clearing her throat. “No, but seriously. You two are friends now?”

“Acquaintances,” Keith says with a shrug of his shoulders.

“That doesn’t make it any better,” Veronica tells him.

“We were just discussing our similar tastes in movies while we waited for you,” Keith says, scooping up the paper and moving over to the couch. “I promise he behaved and didn’t say anything inappropriate.”

“It’s not him I’m worried about,” she calls after him.

Her dad shoots her a look before hiding his face behind the newspaper. Veronica sighs, curling closer into Logan’s side.

“What brings you here so early?” she asks.

“I know you’re hanging out with Wallace and Mac today, but I just wanted to see you first.”

“Bad dream?” she asks, searching his face and trying to read his expression.

He nods, his hand slipping up under the hem of her shirt.

_He needs to feel her skin_ , she thinks. _What did he dream?_

“Me too,” she tells him, staring down at the steam rising from her coffee. “So bad that I was going to see if Wallace and Mac wouldn’t mind a fourth.”

His palm flattens out against her back. “Is this about what happened with Dick yesterday?”

She shakes her head. “No. But I’m not particularly fond of watching you die.”

“Yeah,” he says, his thumb brushing against her skin. “The dreams stopped for a while and now they’re almost getting more realistic if that’s possible.”

“I thought we were supposed to be getting better,” she says quietly. “I thought we _were_ getting better.”

“Minor setback.”

“Minor? I woke up and immediately threw up because I thought you were dead. It was never this bad before.”

She hears her dad ruffle the paper as he turns the page, almost as though he’s trying to remind them that he’s still in the same room and can hear everything. She had sort of forgotten about his presence.

“When do you go to therapy again?” Logan asks.

“Tomorrow.”

He skims his fingertips up and down her back a couple of times before releasing them from underneath her shirt. “All right, so, have your movie day with your friends today. We’ll go to the fair next weekend. We just – we’ll keep doing normal, everyday things until something sticks. Until things feel normal again.”

“What’s your definition of normal? Pre-all of this? Pre-losing Lilly?"

“A new normal,” he tells her. “Late nights spent studying.” He leans in closer to whisper, “Or spent not studying and enjoying…other activities.” She feels the shiver it sends down her spine. “Weekends crashing the frat parties that Dick will inevitably end up joining assuming he decides to come back. You, likely investigating whatever scandal is threading its way around campus.”

“As long as I’m not the center of it,” she grumbles.

“It’s been less than a month, Veronica. I’m no expert, but healing from this sort of thing takes time. We’ll get there.”

She turns her head up to look at him. “Says the guy who showed up at my apartment at 8 AM to reassure himself his dream wasn’t real.”

“Never said it was gonna be easy. Just said we’d get there.”

She kisses his cheek before taking another sip of her coffee. “I think you and my dad have a different taste in movies than Wallace, Mac, and I do, but you’re welcome to stay. I’ll even let you fall asleep on my couch.”


	8. Chapter 8

The nightmares haven’t been as bad as they were that night. She hasn’t woken up sick to her stomach unable to go back to sleep. She hasn’t wandered out into the kitchen in search for coffee only to be greeted by her dad and boyfriend discussing movies. She can breathe a little easier. And it seems so can Logan.

She walks through the county fair with him now, her fingers intertwined through his. The neon lights of the carnival rides light up the darkening sky as the summer sun sets beyond the horizon. She can hear people screaming from the one ride that flips you upside down, and the laughter from children as they run into each other with bumper cars. They walk by the Ferris Wheel, where a mother is desperately trying to stop her child from throwing popcorn every time the wheel stops to load on someone else. The air has that sickly sweetness to it, full of cotton candy and funnel cakes. She’s already going to insist they buy both of those junk foods later.

It’s their first time out in a large public setting together since all of this happened. She can feel the eyes on her back, the whispers as they walk past. There goes Veronica Mars, the girl who can’t manage to keep herself out of trouble. She feels Logan tighten his grip on her hand. He hears them too. Why can’t Hearst be on the other side of the country? She would love to leave all of this behind come August.

“Find a prize you’ve got your eye on yet?” he asks as they start walking by the assortment of game booths.

“Find a game you think you can win yet?” she retorts back.

He huffs, watching as a football player tries to knock down a tower of milk bottles with a baseball to no success. “Maybe not that one.”

She laughs, continuing to lead him down the line of booths. “What about ring toss?”

A young boy who can just barely see over the edge of the booth is trying to toss some brightly colored rings around more milk bottles. His height isn’t helping him any.

“Well I’ve got to be better than that kid,” Logan leans in to whisper.

“One would hope.”

Logan pulls a five dollar bill out of his wallet.

“Who knew you were capable of carrying such small bills?” she teases, as he hands it over to the teenager running the game.

“Babe, I love you, but I’m not spending $100 on a carnival game.”

“Babe?” she asks, raising an eyebrow at him. “That’s new.”

“Trying something out,” he smirks at her as the young boy finishes his turn and the teenager hands the colored rings over to him.

He misses the first four tosses which has Veronica nearly doubled over in laughter. “You’re tall it shouldn’t be this hard.”

He shoves the fifth ring in her direction. “You think it’s so easy, smartass? You try it.”

Veronica plucks the ring out of his fingers with a smirk and turns to study the milk bottles in front of her. She’d watched the little boy undershoot all of his throws and watched Logan overshoot all of his. In her mind, that made her the perfect height to land this. She picks her target and tosses the ring, sinking it right around the neck of the bottle. She throws up a fist pump as she lets out a whoop of triumph. Logan buries his face in his hands, shaking his head as the teenager passes her a stuffed koala.

She nudges the bear in his direction. “I won this for you.”

He peers at her between his fingers. “Oh no.”

“I’ll pay you the dollar back for it if you want,” she says with a shrug. “But my winning toss means your winning koala.”

He takes the stuffed animal out of her hands and stares at it for a moment before tucking it under his arm. “This isn’t over.”

“All right macho man, find one you think you’ll be better at.”

He takes her hand again and leads her back down the row of games. “I find I’m more suited for games of luck and chance.”

“I don’t know if they give stuffed animals away in Vegas.”

He pulls them in front of a brightly colored crate with a kiddie pool sitting on top filled with rubber duckies. She shoots him a look.

“What kind of game is this?” Veronica asks.

“The ducks are marked on the bottom. Pick the winning duck, get a winning prize.”

“What happened to winning me this prize by some manly display of strength?” she asks, gesturing toward his biceps.

“I’ll start doing more push-ups and we’ll try again next year.”

She huffs, crossing her arms over her chest and watching Logan hand over a single dollar. “Getting a little cocky now, aren’t we?”

He waggles his eyebrows at her, keeping his eyes locked on hers as he reaches behind him to pick up a duck without even looking at the pool. He turns it over in his palms to reveal a bright neon green sticker. The winning duck. The woman working the game is handing him a giant ball of fluff with a horn she thinks is supposed to be a narwhal. He passes the sea creature over to Veronica and she scrutinizes it the same way he had his koala.

“Is this the part where I’m supposed to tell you I’ll keep this forever and think of you every time I look at it?” she asks.

“Hold on, let me check the script of this rom com,” he says, pretending to pull an invisible script out of his back pocket. “Yes, that is your line. And then you’re supposed to offer to name it after me.”

She starts laughing so hard she nearly drops the narwhal. “Do people really talk like that?”

He shrugs, looping his free arm through hers. “Some people might. Just not us.”

“I’ll keep the narwhal forever if you agree to keep the koala.”

“The weirdest deal I think we’ve ever made, Mars. But consider it done.”

She smiles, leaning into his side and listening to him list off suggestions as to what they should do at the fair next. She’s about to insist they go investigate the food stands, when she hears it. That loud pop. That crack. The sound of a gunshot. It knocks the wind out of her and somehow she ends up on the ground, a concerned Logan hovering at her side.

“Hey, hey, what happened? What’s wrong?” he asks.

She can’t breathe. This isn’t happening again. Who wants her dead now? What enemies does she have left?

“Veronica. Veronica, I need you to breathe.”

Why isn’t anyone else panicking? There’s an active shooter at this fair and everyone’s staring at her like she’s the one with the gun.

“You didn’t hear that?” she asks.

“Hear what?” Logan presses, the concern evident in his voice.

Is she hearing things now? Is she going crazy? She did used to hallucinate Lilly after she died. That was a sign of a brain tumor, wasn’t it?

“The gunshot,” she tells him.

He stares at her blankly. Oh god, he didn’t hear it. It’s all in her head. It’s – She hears the sound again. But it’s not as loud this time and it doesn’t sound quite right. It sounds fake, like a bad audio recording. Her gaze drifts to the old timey shooting game she’s collapsed in front of. Oh my god she feels like an idiot.

Logan follows her gaze and sees the same thing. She can’t help but watch his face as the realization hits him. That look of pain, that look of worry. She didn’t know her PTSD had gotten this bad. It had been confined to her nightmares for weeks now. Nothing at home or at Logan’s or at her therapist’s office or even at the beach had set her off. But then she remembers being back in the hospital and the way that tray clattering to the floor in the hallway had nearly sent her into a round of hysterics. She’s not dealing with this. She’s not dealing with this at all like she thought she was.

“You’re okay,” Logan tells her, cradling her against his chest. “You’re safe. I’m here.”

He’s been her safe place for weeks now. Her shelter from the storm. They’ve been in this together with their demons and nightmares and ghosts. In this together up until right now when her PSTD over taking the bullet physically manifested itself in the middle of this crowded fairground.

She was shot. He watched it happen. She almost died. He helped save her. 

Her nightmares about losing him and the rape and Lilly and Aaron and Cassidy up on that rooftop all mingling together trying to hide the one fear that’s been silently eating away at her the most.

She took a bullet to the chest. It nicked her heart. Her heart stopped during surgery. She almost died.

_She was shot_.

“Veronica.”

She hears the strangled way he says her name, his voice thick with tears. How many times has he said it and she hasn’t heard? Fuck, he looks so worried.

_Say something, Veronica! Anything!_

“Fuck the new normal,” she says shakily. “I want the old normal back.”

* * *

Logan gets her some water and finds them a place to sit far enough away from the rest of the crowd. She still looks visibly shaken by the whole thing and all he wants to do is whisk her back to his hotel room where she felt safe and protected to him in his arms. She straddles the bench at the small picnic table now, weaving the cap from the water bottle between her fingers as she stares off blankly toward the parking lot, the raucous of the carnival at her back.

She won’t talk to him. She’s lost in some train of thought that he’s not privy to, retreating into herself as though sheltering in place could protect her from the rest of the world.

He’s worried about her. He’s fucking terrified. One minute she’d been laughing with him about forever stuffed animals and the next she was screaming at nothing and cowering on the ground. He’d always associated PTSD with people who had been in war zones. It hadn’t occurred to him that she could have it. Not like this. Not how the wrong noise interpreted the wrong way could send her into a fear spiral.

This wasn’t just a nightmare taking away her sleep. This was a demon poised and ready to attack in broad daylight (or well moonlight at this point). He doesn’t know how to help her. He doesn’t know what to say. So he sits idly by, watching her work through everything in her head.

He estimates around ten minutes pass before she finally says something. “Am I a good person?”

The question catches him off guard and he has to ask for clarification. “What do you mean?”

“Am I being punished for something?”

“Veronica –”

“I help people when they ask for it. Sure, I charge a small fee sometimes, but a girl’s gotta eat. I got straight A’s in school. I got into college. I try to be a good daughter and a good friend and a good girlfriend. And I know I can be stubborn, but I’m working on it. So, what did I do? What did I do to deserve this shitstorm?”

He closes his eyes as though doing so could will away her pain. He hates that she feels this way. Hates that he can’t do anything to make her see this isn’t her fault, that she didn’t cause any of this or bring it upon herself. She deserves the life she had back before Lilly died. Both parents, her best friend, no trauma. He can’t give that to her, no matter how much he wants to.

“You didn’t do anything, Veronica,” he says, opening his eyes. She’s still staring off at the parking lot and not looking at him. “You don’t deserve any of this.”

She shifts toward him, abandoning the bottle cap to pluck at the fluff on the narwhal. “I want it to stop, Logan. I’m so tired. I just want it to stop.”

He scoots closer to her, pulling her forward so she falls into his chest. Her arms wrap around his back and her head tucks under his chin. He’s got her. He’ll protect her. He’ll do whatever it takes.

“What can I do?” he asks her. “What do you need?”

“This is good,” she says into his shirt.

They sit in silence for a moment before he feels her start to nod against his chest and pull away. He almost doesn’t want to let her, but he does, watching her finish off the rest of her water. Logan wants to suggest they pick up some takeout and head back to his place, but they’ve barely been here for long and she was so excited to come. He won’t rush her, leaving the decision up to her. But she’s been so quiet he’s having trouble reading her.

He turns his head at the sound of footsteps behind them. He recognizes the girl from the junior class, well the senior class now, heading toward them. She seems like she’s on a mission, and he doesn’t particularly like that this mission appears to involve them.

“I need your help, Veronica.”

Logan opens his mouth, ready to politely, or maybe not so politely, tell Melanie Forsythe to fuck off because now is not the time for this, when Veronica holds up a hand as if to tell him to hold on.

“My help with what?” she asks her.

Melanie wrings her hands together nervously. “I think I’m being followed.”

Oh no, a stalking case is definitely not something she needs right now.

“Currently?” Veronica asks, trying to peer around behind her.

Melanie shakes her head. “No, just…lately I can’t shake the feeling. I’ll go to the store or out with friends and I constantly feel like there’s someone watching over my shoulder. Could you help me out? Do you have the time? I’ll pay whatever your rate is.”

Logan watches Veronica as she mulls it over. He gets a glimmer of her old normal. Pre-graduation Veronica laser-focused on a case.

“Tomorrow,” she tells Melanie. “Go about your day as normal but tell me where you’ll be. I’ll follow you and see if there’s anyone else doing the same.”

Melanie nods, a grateful expression on her face. “Thank you, seriously thank you. I just want it stop.”

He watches Veronica flinch as the younger girl repeats her earlier words.

“I’ll see what I can do.”

The girl thanks her again before walking away, checking back over her shoulder like she’s worried her potential stalker followed her here.

“You sure this is a good idea right now?” Logan asks hesitantly.

“I could use the distraction,” she answers quietly.

“With everything you have going on right now, you want to take something like this on?”

“No one’s following me,” she tells him, picking up the bottle cap to fidget with again. “No one except ghosts.”

“Yeah, but you don’t know what this is,” Logan presses. “What if you piss someone off and they come after you instead?”

He sees the flash of anger across her features. The pain that settles into her eyes. Poor wording on his part. Very bad, poor, fucked up wording.

“Yeah, like Cassidy?”

_Shit_.

“That was different,” he says.

“Really? How? I was working a case, same as always. Pissed off the wrong guy along the way and he shot me. What do you think Melanie’s stalker is going to do? Finish the job?”

“Veronica.” He closes his eyes around her name. He can’t listen to her joke about her death so casually. Not when he almost lost her.

“I’ll be fine, Logan.”

“Oh yeah? How can you be so sure? How do you know this won’t end up with you stuck in a situation you can’t get yourself out of? Like back in that bar with the Fitzpatrick’s? Or trapped on another rooftop with another psychopath with a gun?”

She shakes her head. “First of all, who said I was doing any of this alone? And second of all, Tim Morrison isn’t going to hurt me.”

He feels a little bit of his own anger recede. “Who’s Tim Morrison?”

“Melanie’s stalker. He was a freshman last year. My guess is he has a crush on her and hasn’t quite worked out how people skills work yet.”

He cocks his head at her. “How do you –”

“I saw him hiding behind a dumpster over near where she and her friends were talking earlier. Thought it was a little weird but didn’t put two and two together until she came asking.”

“If you already knew, why didn’t you just tell her?”

“I wanted to get the proof,” she shrugs. “And to get paid.”

They’re both quiet for a moment until she speaks up again. “Is this going to be a problem? Me still working cases? My dad wants me to stop, but I thought that you understood.”

He doesn’t want to fight with her, but he needs her to understand where he’s coming from. “A recording of a gunshot noise gave you a panic attack tonight. You barely get any sleep. The last thing you investigated ended with – are you sure you’re ready to dive back into this again?”

“I told you, I already know the answer to this one.”

“Okay, but what about the next one? Or the one after that? These simple favors may not seem threatening on the surface but –”

“God, you sound just like my dad,” she groans. “Need I remind you, I was only at the Fitzpatrick’s bar as a favor _for you_. The things most people want help with don’t involve alleged murder charges.”

He feels his jaw clench. She’s taking low blows now. He struck a nerve and now she’s lashing out. He recognizes it as one of her defense mechanisms, but he really thought they were past all that. And he can’t help but retaliate. “Fine. Fine. That one’s on me. I take both the blame and the guilt. But I know you, Veronica. You say you’ll stay away from the big stuff like murder investigations and bus crashes, but the lost dogs and ripped off classmates will only hold your interest for so long. And then what?”

“I don’t know, I piss off the wrong person and they try and kill me?”

His anger gets the better of him as his hands ball into fists and he hits the picnic table. She jumps, but doesn’t move herself away from him. He tries to tell himself to breathe, to get his anger under control. He’s having flashbacks to last summer and breaking that lamp in her apartment. The last thing he wants is to take it out on her.

“How are you being so casual about this? An hour ago –”

“An hour ago, I was having a PTSD induced panic attack in front of a bunch of familiar faces and strangers. I want my life back, Logan. I’m not going to get that by sitting on the sidelines. I have to face this thing head on. Is it a risk? Sure. But no more of one than what it’s been for the last two years. Things are different now, I get that. You’re scared. I’m scared. But at the end of the day, this is who I am. I don’t know how else to deal with any of this. All the talking is good, but it’s not fixing things. I realized that today. Am I scared shitless that someone else I dig up dirt on isn’t going to be too happy with the result and try to hurt me? Yes. But I can’t let that fear win. I want my old life back. The only thing I want to keep from this new version is you.”

He braces his palms flat against the picnic table, expelling a sigh. “You have to give me the space to be afraid for you. I lost Lilly and Duncan too, you know. And honestly with the way Dick left, I’m not entirely sure that he’s coming back. I’m not asking you to change for me or to give up a part of yourself. I just need you to be careful. To bring backup whether of the canine variety or the human variety remains case dependent but…I can’t lose you too.”

“I don’t want to get shot again. That’s not my goal here.”

“I would be concerned if it was.”

She laughs a little, tugging the narwhal up against her chest. “I can’t keep living in the what ifs. And I know that scares you, I hear you. But people are going to keep coming to me for help. And maybe less so at Hearst, because not everyone will know me, but what am I supposed to tell them? No, I don’t do that anymore because I got shot? You know damn well Lamb wouldn’t investigate anything that falls into my lap. If I don’t take the risk to look into it, no one will.”

“Who says that person has to be you? Let your dad handle it. Hell, even Vinnie.”

She shakes her head, squeezing the stuffed animal tighter. “This is who I am. You _know_ that.”

He does know that. He knows exactly who he fell in love with. But that doesn’t make him any less scared for her. It doesn’t make his nightmares where he loses her feel any less real.

“Mac and Wallace will adopt you, you know,” she says quietly, reading his silence. “You’re important to me, so you’re important to them. You’re not alone, Logan. And you’re not losing me.”

She knows him, knows how he feels about family and having people in his life who actually care about him. He thinks she can see right through him sometimes, offering her friends as his own. She knows she can’t be the only person he has, even if she is the most important.

He loves her. For all her stubbornness and that big heart of hers. He’ll do whatever he can to protect her and keep her safe. If she wants to keep doing this, he’ll support her. But he won’t let her do it alone.

“We’re a team now, okay?” he says, pulling the koala off the table and into his lap. “No more leaving me behind in the car.”

She snorts. “So now I have to teach you how to be a P.I. too?”

“Hey, I do pretty good for myself, _Sugarpuss_.”

She sighs. “You’re going to get sick of me. Dating me. Working with me. I’m always going to be around.”

“A sacrifice I’m willing to make.”

“You’re willing to get sick of me?”

He shakes his head. “I’m willing to spend all of my time with you. Now come on, I know you’ve had your eye on that cotton candy since we got here.”


	9. Chapter 9

She feels his eyes on her as she plucks pieces of cotton candy off of its paper cone and places them into her mouth to melt on her tongue. He’s not watching her like he had been with the ice cream a few days ago. No, that had been entirely sexual. She could see it in his eyes, hear it in his breathing when she caught on and started overexaggerating the movements of her tongue. But that’s not how he’s watching her now.

No, he has something else entirely on his mind. If she knows him as well as she thinks she does, he’s still thinking about their fight. The one they didn’t finish. Not really anyway. He’d _conceded_. Let her win because what? She’s the victim? She hates that word.

And sure, she’ll let him tag along on her cases. It’s not like he hasn’t done it in the past. He’s helped her out before plenty of times. But she can tell that his motivation this time is more bodyguard and less partner. That’s the part that irritates her.

But how does she tell him that without it sounding like she values his life more than she values her own? How does she tell him that it’s not okay for him to risk his life for something like this but it’s okay for her to do it without sounding like a hypocrite? There’s just no way she’d be able to forgive herself if something happened to him because of something _she_ dragged him into. She still hasn’t been able to forgive herself for bringing him into this whole mess to begin with.

Her pain being a part of his ghosts? That alone threatens to break her.

Veronica plucks off another piece of cotton candy, continuing to watch him watch her.

She doesn’t know when this game became so high stakes. Help Wallace get the PCH’ers off his back. Clear Weevil of credit card fraud charges. Help some kid track down his dead-beat dad.

_Solve Lilly’s murder. Solve the bus crush._

She shakes her head at her own train of thoughts and that catches Logan’s attention.

“Sure, the cotton candy is just empty calories, but the sugar rush is surely worth it,” he tells her with a smirk.

“You’re still upset,” she says, picking off another piece and handing it to him.

Logan accepts it, plopping it into his mouth with a flourish. “I’m still upset?”

“That I’m still taking cases.”

“No, we solved that, remember? I’m coming with you.”

She sighs around another bite of the candy, shaking her head.

“You have a problem with that, don’t you?” he asks, his voice quieter this time.

She’s not a cop. She has a zero training. She’s a teenager operating mostly on intuition. So, how does she tell him she doesn’t want him tagging along because she doesn’t want him to get himself killed? Especially when she’s trying to convince him that she’ll only take on safe cases…

“I just don’t want to see you get hurt,” she comes right out and says it.

He counters like she figured he would. “If they’re not dangerous then I’ll be fine.”

“I can’t even forgive myself for causing you to lose sleep the past couple of weeks. You think I’d just be okay if something were to happen to you?”

“So then, what makes you think I’d be okay with it?”

She drops her gaze, her hair falling over her shoulder. “I haven’t declared a major yet, you know. This doesn’t have to be my whole life. But it’s my life right now.”

“If you’re going to stop eventually, why not just stop now?”

“Maybe I’m an addict,” she shrugs, picking off another piece of cotton candy but not eating it. “My mother’s addicted to alcohol and I’m addicted to…whatever this is. It’s genetic.”

“Look, I told you earlier that I’m not asking you to change who you are. I’m just worried about you. Veronica, you don’t want to see the kind of stuff that plagues my nightmares.”

She hands him her abandoned piece of cotton candy and he takes it. “I’m pretty sure I already have in my own.”

“Then –”

“I can’t keep living like this. I have to move on from it.” She sees his face fall and quickly amends her words. “Not from you. So not from you. You’re not going anywhere.”

He nods in understanding and waits for her to continue, taking the rest of the cotton candy from her and finishing it off.

“For weeks, Logan, all we’ve done is talk about this. I mean it’s not like it’s _all_ we talk about, but it works its way into every conversation. And we’ve needed to talk about it, it’s been good for us. But it’s like…I need new source material. If all I can think about is Cassidy and everything he did to me, I can’t move forward. So, I want to follow Melanie around and catch Tim doing the same. I want to work cases again and not associate them with everything that went so damn wrong with the last one. I want to show up to my criminology class in the fall and not have my PTSD freak me out in the middle of a lecture.”

He tosses the now empty paper cone into a nearby trashcan and cups her face with both of his hands. His fingers are sticky from the sugar and she can still smell the sweetness lingering on them.

“Veronica, I want that for you. I want you to be happy. Detective work, P.I. work, whatever you want to call it, makes you happy. And you’re good at it. You’ve got a mind for this stuff which will undoubtedly blow your criminology professor away.”

“But?”

“Money and worldly possessions aside, I don’t have much. But I have you. And yes, you’re alive and breathing and recovering from this all the same, but…I felt you die in my arms. The light in your eyes went out, your heart stopped in surgery, I thought I’d lost you. I can’t go through that again. I won’t.”

She slips her arms around his neck and he leans forward to press his forehead against hers.

“I promise to be careful. I promise to always have my taser on me. And I promise not to leave you in the car anymore.”

He kisses her. It’s soft. Tender. The flavor of “pink” still lingering on both of their lips. She holds him against her when he starts to pull away.

“I know that isn’t enough,” she continues still holding on to him tight. “But I promise you, they’re not empty words. I don’t want to go through anything like this again. I don’t want you to have to either. You’ve lost enough in your life already. You deserve some happiness.”

“ _You_ make me happy. But I need you alive for that to work.”

“I won’t go looking for trouble. It seems to find me all on its own anyway, but…I won’t go digging into something unless someone specifically asks for my help. I won’t keep things from you. I’ll loop my dad in if things get too serious, too fast. I want you to be able to move forward too and I get that you can’t do that if you’re always looking over your shoulder to try and protect me.”

He leans forward again and kisses the tip of her nose. She wants to keep him safe. She wants to keep both of them safe.

“We’re going to get through this, Logan. I’ll find my way back to the old normal. And I’ll be sure to bring you along with me when I do.”

* * *

He has to admit, he feels a little weird carrying this stuffed koala around all over the place. He thinks to himself if Dick were here, he’d try and pass it off as Veronica’s since she was already carrying around the narwhal. He’s being a good boyfriend, like offering to carry her purse. And while he knows it would still earn him a “whipped” comment and gesture from his friend, it would at least knock him off the scent of the true sap he’s turning into. But as he looks down at the stupid bear tucked under his arm and her fingers loosely tangled through his while they wait in line for the Ferris Wheel, Logan finds that he doesn’t actually mind.

She’s his, he has the koala because of her, and he is so fucking in love with her.

All right, let the world know it. Logan Echolls is a sap.

And on top of everything, he feels like he’s getting through to her with the P.I. stuff. _Baby steps_ , he thinks. No more secrets between them, no more solo missions. They’re a team now, and she actually seems open to it. She wants him to heal as badly as he wants for her. 

“You know, per the typical plotline of a romantic comedy, I should be paying the guy running this ride to stop it when we get to the top, faking a temporary ride malfunction.”

“The point of that being what, exactly?” Veronica asks.

He shrugs. “A good view for a make out session.”

“Do you frequently kiss me with your eyes open?”

Logan looks down at her and sees her staring up at him expectantly. “A good view pre-make out then.”

“Not gonna happen,” she says, shaking her head as the line moves forward.

“And why not?”

Her grip on his hand tightens. “I can’t straddle you suspended up in the air like that. That’s even more dangerous than my P.I. cases.”

He groans at the mental image of her thighs wrapped around his waist.

“Soon,” she tells him, stretching up to place a kiss to his cheek.

“Don’t make promises you don’t intend to keep,” he says teasingly.

“Oh, I very much intend to keep this promise. Just like all of the others I made earlier. But this one? I very much look forward to making good on this one.”

The line shuffles forward again as a few more baskets are loaded up and stops again once they’re next in line.

“Do you have big plans?” Logan asks. “A whole romantic evening planned?”

“Nah,” she shrugs. “I’m going to jump you when you least expect it.”

He sputters out a laugh. “Like a cat hunting its prey?”

Veronica smirks at him. “Not hunting for prey. Think of it more like…marking my territory.”

He lowers his voice, speaking into her ear. “And how exactly do you intend to mark me? With your teeth or with your nails?”

He watches her eyes darken, the way her tongue darts out to wet her lower lip. “I was thinking a combination of both.”

His lips twitch as her words settle heavily into his groin. He has to force himself to think about anything besides her mouth on him or her nails raking over his back while he –

Logan clears his throat. “All right, Bobcat. Mark me whenever you’re ready.”

“Bobcat?” she asks as they’re ushered forward into the next waiting Ferris Wheel basket.

He waits until the lap bar has been secured across them and the wheel turns to load the next passengers before answering her. “Yep. I think I read somewhere once that they like to mark their territory with claw marks. Seems fitting.”

She purposely digs her nails into the back of his hand in response, her smirk from earlier still spread across her lips.

“Easy there, Bobcat. We’re still in public.”

The wheel lifts them higher and she leans into his side, both of their stuffed animals squishing up against their ribs.

“Just making sure that you’re already aware of the fact that you’re mine,” she tells him.

_Fuck_. He can’t unsee it now. The mental images of her claiming his skin as her own. Marking him out of pleasure. Hers. Veronica’s.

_Mine._

“You okay there, bud?” she asks, elbowing him in the side.

“You’re gonna be the death of me,” he says, shaking his head while his mind still races with the thoughts of her in the back of his Xterra a year ago. Her pulling at his shirt collar, claiming his mouth with her own. Her hands lacing behind his neck, threading into his hair. God, he’s missed her.

Logan refocuses on her face, trying so damn hard to shake off his arousal. He notices her pensive look staring back at him.

_Oh_. That’s right. Poor choice of words. Hadn’t she just told him less than 30 minutes ago that she was afraid she’d drag him into something that would get him hurt?

“Not – not like that. More like la petit mort, the little death. Less like gunfire and explosions.”

She nods, understanding. “I intend to be responsible for plenty of those.”

_Fuck_ , she has _got_ to stop doing that. They’ve been talking in innuendo for weeks and he’ll wait for her, wait until she’s ready, until she makes the first move. But his imagination is starting to run rampant with thoughts of skin against skin and those breathy little noises he used to get her to make. He unconsciously tugs at his shorts and hears her start laughing.

“I’m sorry,” she says through her laughter. “I’ll stop teasing.”

“As if you aren’t making yourself just as turned on right now,” he grits out, shifting uncomfortably in the seat.

“I’d answer that, but it might make your current situation worse.”

He groans, his thoughts now drifting to that evening she’d worn a dress for him. His thigh pressed between her legs. Her wet core pressed against his skin separated only by the thin fabric of her underwear. The way she rolled her hips into his thigh while he kissed his way down her neck… He wonders how wet she is right now. And fuck, he wants to find out.

“Go ahead and tell me,” he says roughly. “This poor koala is already about to be used for coverage purposes.”

They’re sitting at the top of the Ferris Wheel now. The lights of the fair glitter below while the stars overhead shine on above. Laughter and chatter and excited screams swirl below them. She leans into him again, wetting her lips with that damn teasing tongue of hers.

“I don’t think I’ve been this wet since the last time you were on top of me.”

He grunts, skimming his fingers up her inner thigh. Her eyes follow their path, her breath hitching when he reaches the hem of her shorts.

“Correct me if I’m wrong,” Logan starts, toying with the fabric at the hem. “But weren’t you having sex with my former roommate? Or was that just another one of my bad dreams?”

She wraps her hand around his wrist but doesn’t guide his hand away. “I told you, he could never get me worked up the way you can.”

“So why were you with him?” he asks, his fingers teasing just under the hem of her shorts.

“You want me to talk about Duncan when your hand is where it is?”

He shifts it higher under her shorts. “Just answer my question.”

“Had to finish what we started,” she says, her breathing quickening as he continues to slowly move his hand.

Logan watches the rise and fall of her chest as his fingertips brush her panty line. “You had to put the two of us on hold to do that?”

There’s that tongue of hers again. “I hit play again. On us.”

He takes that as a cue and brushes his knuckles against her underwear right over her core. Her breath hitches and _oh_ she’s wet. From nothing but talking about it. Imagine when he’s actually _trying_.

He leans over and nips at her ear. “I want you.”

She shivers, her hips pitching forward against his knuckles. “The correct response here is ‘then take me,’ but I don’t think this ride is sturdy enough for that.”

The wheel starts turning again and Logan reluctantly removes his hand out from under her shorts. He leaves it on her upper thigh, thumb brushing against her skin while he keeps his eyes trained on hers.

“Oh, I’ll take you, Veronica Mars. I’ll take you over and over.”

Her eyes flutter closed and she makes one of those little breathy sounds that are practically engrained in his memory from before. That noise and the sound of her laughter are the only music he ever needs.

“I’ll have you wondering why you ever hit pause on us to begin with,” he continues. “I can help you to forget.”

She nods without opening her eyes, her hand seeking his again. Her nails dig into his skin once more and she gently drags them across his hand, marking him with a scratch that disappears within seconds.

Marking him. Claiming him. _Mine_.

“You’re not losing me, Veronica. We’ve only just begun.”


	10. Chapter 10

Sure enough, Tim Morrison was following Melanie Forsythe. The kid was a creep, but he wasn’t violent. And it didn’t take Veronica long to convince him to knock it off. Easiest paycheck she’s ever made.

And now she has to go see Logan. She’d side-lined him earlier, convincing him she could handle Tim on her own. She’d been right, it was easily a one-woman job. But in reality, she just needed to distance herself from him to focus. She hasn’t been able to stop thinking about him and his hands and his mouth ever since their conversation on the Ferris Wheel last night. Her body was thrumming with desire, vibrating with _need_ , and she was sure if he’d been next to her all morning, she would have jumped him right then and there, completely botching the job at hand.

She’d wanted him last night. She was beyond ready to get the hell out of the carnival to be alone with him. But he’d brought her home, chastely kissed her goodnight, and told her he wasn’t ready to upset her dad by keeping her out all night.

All the more reason to not like the fact that they’re _acquaintances_ now.

Veronica knocks on his hotel room door, briefly wondering if she’ll catch him in nothing but a towel again. She can work with that this time. She’d prefer it.

Logan opens the door fully dressed, smirking down at her as he leans against the doorframe, not letting her enter.

“What?” she asks when he doesn’t move.

“Did you catch Tim?”

“Sure did. Melanie was grateful.”

“I bet.”

She raises an eyebrow at him. “Are you going to let me in or –?”

“That depends,” he says casually with a shrug. “What are your intentions here?”

She matches his smirk with her own. “To make good on one of my promises.”

“You sure?” he asks still not moving. “You already benched me once today. Pretty sure that’s a broken promise right there already.”

“Do you want to fight about probably the easiest case I’ve ever worked or do you want to finish what we started last night? Hell, what we started a year ago?”

“Not picking a fight, just making an observation here.”

She steps closer to him and he doesn’t move. She steps closer still and presses herself against him, snaking her arms around his back. She looks up at him, repeating her words from last night. “Then take me.”

He practically growls as he finally uncrosses his arms and reaches for the back of her head, pulling her mouth to his. He walks them backwards into the hotel room, closing the door behind them and guiding them over to the couch. Logan sits and pulls her down onto his lap. She brackets his hips with her thighs, hoping that he appreciates that she broke out one of her old skirts just for this, just for him.

She gets her answer when his hands skim up her thighs, her skirt now so high on her waist it’s practically around her stomach. She wants if off entirely, but her hands are otherwise occupied fisting into his hair while he continues to kiss her senseless. And his hands are busy groping at her ass causing her to twist her hips against the hardening length of him, now trapped against her just where she wants it. He lets out a little grunt when she nips at his lips and grinds down onto him in the same motion.

His hands leave her ass and she starts to complain when she realizes his intention was to undo the buttons down the front of her skirt and toss it aside. His mouth trails away from her lips, down her jawline and over to that spot on her neck he knows she can’t resist. She lets her head loll to the side, giving him access to it. Her hands are tightening their grip in his hair when _oh there, right there_.

“Fuck, Logan,” she curses, her hips still grinding down against his erection.

She could come just from this. She just needs a little bit more…

He kisses his way back to her mouth, kissing her hard while his hands grip at her hips. She finally releases her tight grip on his hair, and he huffs into her mouth in response. But she wants this t-shirt off of him. She wants to feel his skin, earn this new nickname of hers he’s given her.

Veronica tugs on the hem of his shirt, trying to pull it up and off over his head. He’s reluctant to acquiesce at first, his kiss almost dizzying in how feverishly he deepens it. But he pulls back to catch his breath and she uses that moment to pull his shirt off. She leans forward and nips her way across his clavicle. He groans as she bites and sucks her way across his skin. Her hands snake around to his back, her fingertips brushing over a raised patch of skin. A scar.

_From Aaron_.

She pulls back to look at him, the question in her eyes. He nods, reaching up to tuck her hair back behind her ear. She sees the way he trusts her, and it hits her that this is really the first time they’re exposing themselves to each other like this. This is opening up all of them for the other person to see. Not just about the sex, but their scars too. He’s all in. And so is she.

She traces the scar at his back with her fingers again, before pulling her own shirt off over her head. She hears his sharp intake of breath, but she’s not sure if he’s more focused on her breasts or the scar nestled in between them. Probably some combination of both. He leans forward and presses his lips to the scar and if he keeps that up, she swears she’s going to start crying. He does it again and she has to grab his face and pull him away. His gaze meets hers and he must see the sheen of tears in her eyes because he nods and stands, scooping her up in his arms and carrying her to his bed.

He lays her down before taking off his jeans and crawling on top of her. He kisses her again, his hands sliding under her back to fumble with the clasp on her bra.

“Ready for me to show you what I meant at the beach?” he asks, pulling her bra off and tossing it to the floor.

She nods, the anticipation settling in between her legs. _Fuck_ , she wants him to touch her. Logan bends his head and laves his tongue over the hardened peak of one of her nipples. _Oh my god that –_ he does it again, this time sucking her into his mouth. _Holy hell_. He teases her with his tongue and the occasional graze of his teeth and she’s arching her back into him, squirming beneath him because friction she needs friction to go along with this delicious sensation. He releases her from his mouth with a wet pop before he kisses his way over to her other breast to give it the same attention.

She’s mewling now, making noises that in some stream of thought she thinks are almost catlike and the word bobcat floats back across her subconscious. Her hips are bucking at the air now as his are settled off to her side, his erection pressing into her outer thigh. Her nails dig into his back when his teeth discover a particularly sensitive spot on the underside of her breast. He hisses, nipping at that same spot again.

“Logan,” she practically whines his name, but she needs him to stop doing that. She needs him to do other things.

He laughs at her, he _chuckles_ , and kisses his way down her sternum and over her ribs. He keeps kissing his way down, across her stomach, over her navel. What is he doing? Oh. _Oh_. Her brain catches up to her arousal when his lips meet her hipbones and he _licks_ his way across the top of her underwear line. His chin rests on the top of her pelvis as he looks up at her like he’s asking for permission to continue. She’s never – Duncan wouldn’t –

Veronica nods and he slowly pulls her underwear down off of her. He kisses his way up her inner thigh, making eye contact with her one more time before bending his head and slowly dragging his tongue across her clit. Her hips twist at the contact and he’s _chuckling_ again, holding her hips down as he nearly repeats his earlier pattern from her breasts. The way he’s licking and sucking at her, she feels like she can’t breathe, like she can’t get enough air into her lungs but _oh my god, fuck there, right there, don’t stop._

She might have said that out loud, it might have been all in her head, she’s not even sure at this point. She does hear herself moan as Logan curls a finger inside of her. She hears him moan in response when he feels how wet she is. He adds a second finger and that’s it, she’s done. The rhythm of his fingers coupled with the rhythm of his tongue and she breaks for him. Comes undone quite possibly screaming his name as the tendrils of her orgasm pull her over the edge. He keeps stroking her through all of it, letting her ride it out on his mouth and hand.

She finds her breathing again and that jackass is still laughing at her. Hadn’t he also told her at the beach that jackass Logan didn’t want to be a jackass to her anymore?

“What about that amuses you?” she asks, shakily propping herself up on her elbows.

“You swear like a sailor, you know that?”

She feels the blush color her cheeks. She has no memory of this, and it just happened. She was that far gone, that lost in him and his ministrations.

“Lose the boxers and I’ll surprise you with even more colorful language.”

He tosses her a shit-eating grin as he pulls the boxers down and tosses them off to the side. She takes in the sight of him as he hovers back over her to pull a condom out of his nightstand. She takes it from him, wanting the extra excuse to wrap her hands around his length. He kisses her again and she can taste herself on his tongue. Fuck, why is she so turned on by that?

Logan breaks the kiss and brushes her hair which clings to her sweaty forehead off her face. He kisses the tip of her nose before grabbing himself to position his dick at her entrance.

“Keep your eyes open, Veronica,” he whispers into her ear. “I want to watch.”

She shivers and nods, forcing her eyes to stay locked on his as he slowly pushes into her. She’s sure her eyes widen to match the way her mouth falls open as she adjusts to the fullness of him. He hasn’t even started moving yet and _fuck_ he feels amazing. He tilts his hips into hers a couple of times, adjusting his angle with every thrust until he finds that spot which causes her eyes to screw shut and her to curse around his name. He stays there, finding a rhythm and picking up his speed.

She’s chanting something. His name? A curse word? _Yes, there yes_? She’s not even sure but oh my god can he just keep doing that forever she doesn’t want this sensation to stop. She’s aware of his breathing quickening, the guttural moans emanating from his throat. And oh god, she’s doing that, she’s causing him to make those noises, those moans are all _for her_.

“Logan,” she hears herself say his name this time, her nails raking over his back as her legs come up to wrap around his waist and _oh fuck_ it creates a deeper angle she didn’t even know she needed until now.

She’s so fucking close to coming again. She just needs – she needs – Logan dips his head again and captures one of her nipples in his mouth and she absolutely shatters, her hips still weakly trying to meet his thrusts and she convulses around him. She hears the end of her name, just the “Ronica” as his thrusts speed up before going sloppy and he comes undone inside of her. He hovers over her for a moment, exhaling a shaky breath, before slowly pulling out and getting rid of the condom.

“Woof,” she breathes as he pulls her up against his chest. “That was…woof.”

He strokes the back of her hair, placing a kiss to her forehead.

“See what can happen when there’s no one around to interrupt us?” he asks.

She nods, turning her head to place a kiss on his chest against a fresh scratch mark she has no recollection of leaving behind.

“You should see what you did to my back, Bobcat,” he smiles, still playing with her hair.

She ducks her head into his chest. “Sorry.”

Logan laughs, brushing his fingertips down the column of her spine. “Don’t be. I was into it.”

She looks back up at him, grinning. “Yeah?”

“Worth the wait,” he tells her.

She smiles again, settling back against his chest like a pillow. Logan skims his hand down her arm, stopping when his fingers brush against a simple gold chain at her wrist with a heart shaped clasp.

“Is this?” he starts. “No. It can’t be.”

“The bracelet you gave me when we were 13? 25 cents out of one of those gumball machines at the arcade? Yeah, it is.”

His next breath gets caught in his throat as he runs his thumb over the chain. “I can’t believe you kept this.”

“I was a sentimental young teenager, Logan. You were my first kiss, I had a crush on you, but so did my best friend. And you handing this cheap piece of junk to me instead of to Lilly that day? Oh, we were practically engaged.”

The sound of his laughter rumbles underneath her head. “So, what happened?”

“Lilly happened,” she shrugs. “I caught her trying to take it out of my jewelry box. She claimed she was just looking at it, but I knew her well enough even back then. So, I hid it. Hid it so well I lost it. I found it a couple of weeks ago when I was bored out of my skull on bedrest and decided to clean my room to pass the time. Decided to wear it today to see if you’d remember it. And you did, you big sentimental sap.”

He hugs her against him a little tighter. “I can buy you a nicer one, you know. Something that won’t turn your wrist green if you wear it for too long.”

“I don’t need you to spend your money on me.”

“Fine, it won’t be Tiffany’s. But it will still cost more than a quarter.”

“You’re not going to make me get rid of this one, are you? It’s the first thing you ever gave me.”

“Your narwhal can wear it,” he says, bringing her wrist up to his lips. “You can start a random gifts from Logan Echolls collection.”

She laughs. “Was I supposed to keep that gum wrapper you threw at me junior year? I left that on the floor of the school hallway.”

He laughs again too, and she shifts her weight so her arms are crossed on his chest and she can look at him. He brushes a thumb against her cheek.

“You know,” he starts, continuing to rub her cheek. “I had that seashell you picked up the night of Homecoming. The one you found on the beach and slipped into my pocket. I don’t know what happened to it after the fire. I lost a lot of memories in that blaze, most of them bad, but not all of them. I always wondered why you gave me that shell though. I never asked.”

She smiles turning her head toward his hand to kiss his palm. “I don’t know why I did it. It’s not like I was drunk or anything. Guess I thought it would be funny, I don’t know. But you kept that?”

Logan nods. “I did. It was a nice reminder of a great night.”

“I’ll get you another one the next time we go to the beach. You can pretend it’s from Homecoming.”

“Can we rent a limo for the hell of it and stay out all night again?”

“Just yesterday you told me you didn’t want to do that to my dad. One round with me and you’re already ready to change that opinion? I’m that good, huh?”

He pulls her mouth down to his, kissing her soft and slow. She sighs happily against his lips, pulling away and resting her forehead against his.

“Can we keep the whole world in this room?” she asks. “In this bed? I feel safe here. And happy.”

“The whole world just you and me, huh? You won’t get bored without cases to solve? You won’t miss your dad?”

“Get bored of doing what we just did?” she asks, running a hand down his arm. “Not likely. And Dad will be fine. I’ll be sure to call him from time to time.”

Logan laughs. “And your other friends?”

“They don’t need me,” she says, starting to trace aimless shapes against his bicep. “I’ll call them from time to time too to check in.”

“So, all you need to feel safe is me?”

She meets his gaze. “That and my taser.”

He’s laughing again, rolling them so he’s back on top. She’s laughing with him too and her heart feels so full. If this was her whole world, her safety net, she would never have to deal with her PTSD again. There’s nothing to set her off. And if her nightmares still woke her in the middle of the night, he would be right here next to her, alive and safe and sound. She wishes things were that simple.

Logan hums, rolling off to her side and propping himself up on his elbow. “You know, I haven’t felt safe since I was seven. Just constantly felt like I was waiting for Aaron to get pissed off about something else stupid that I did or didn’t do. Even when he was in jail, I still didn’t feel safe. Like he was going to get out and come after me for not supporting him.”

“What about now that he’s gone?”

“I’ve spent my whole life worried, looking over my shoulder for him. And now I don’t have to. Now I have you.”

“I make you feel safe?”

He smirks at her. “That and your taser.”

Veronica rolls her eyes and shoves him.

“I’m serious,” he gets out between laughs. “You’re my safe space. Even if you leave me covered in claw marks.”

She shoves him again. “They’re probably already gone, smartass. Unlike this hickey I have a feeling is on my neck right now.”

He traces his finger over the spot on her neck. “Yeah, I can see it starting to bruise. There’s one on your right breast too. My bad.”

She huffs, tugging on him so he rolls onto his stomach. She wants to check his back for her nail marks, but she’s greeted with more scars than she expected. Her breath catches in her throat as she starts to trace over each one with her index finger.

“How many of these are from surfing and how many are from Aaron?”

“Mostly him,” Logan answers softly.

“Oh Logan, I –”

She doesn’t know what to say. Simply saying that she’s sorry his dad was an asshole just doesn’t seem to cover it. So, she scoots down on the mattress and presses her lips to every scar, as though she can try and kiss away his pain. She hears his breath hitch after each one, and now she’s worried that she’s upset him. She kisses the last one, just above his hip, the one she’s felt countless times during their previous intense make out sessions, before she lays back down next to him. His eyes are filled with tears when she looks over at him.

“I’m sorry,” she says quietly.

He rolls back onto his side, leans forward to kiss her scar from the bullet once more, and then pulls her tight against his chest.

“I love you,” he breathes into her hair. “So much, Veronica. So damn much.”

She closes her eyes, listening to the steady rhythm of his heartbeat against her ear. “Love you too, Lo. No more looking over your shoulder for him, okay? He’s gone and he’s not coming back. You’re safe. We’re safe.”

She feels him nod. Feels the wetness of his cheek brush against her forehead. She turns her head up to kiss his jaw.

“I’ve got you,” she adds softly. “And I’m not leaving.”


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Straight up, I’m from the Midwest in the US. I’ve been boating dozens of times, but only out on lakes and rivers. So if aspects of this don’t apply to the ocean well, blame my landlocked upbringing.

Logan dreams of her. Scratch marks and milky thighs. Her filthy mouth and her breathy laugh. No one dies. He wakes up hard instead of shaken and worried. It’s a much needed change of pace, even if he’s still waking up alone. He needs Keith to catch a case that takes him out of town for a day or two, so he can keep Veronica in his bed.

And he has to share her today. He’s taking her and Wallace and Mac out on his new speed boat this afternoon. He has his California Boater Card, so he’s technically allowed to drive it, but he’s still not 100% on what he’s doing. It’ll be an adventure for sure. A part of him wishes that Dick was back from the Caymans to join them. He likes her friends, but he misses the wild debauchery associated with his own.

The first thing he notices when Veronica slides into the passenger seat of his car, is that she’s made zero effort in trying to cover up the hickey he left her with.

“Does your dad think you got in a fight using your neck?” he asks.

She shoots him a look as she turns to drop her bag in the backseat. “He was in the shower when I left, so he hasn’t seen it. And I’m not going to bother trying to cover it with makeup if I’m just going to get wet.”

“Veronica, please. Wallace and Mac will be with us.”

It takes her a moment, but she catches onto his dirty train of thought and punches him in the arm. “With ocean water not…with that.”

He grins, shifting the car into drive and heading toward the marina to meet up with her friends.

“Hey,” she starts, reaching across the center console to rub his arm. “Thanks for hanging out with my other friends today. I know they’re not your usual crowd, but –”

“I’m not theirs either, but we all seem to have one very important person in common.”

She rolls her eyes, ducking her head and trying to hide her blush. She still can’t take a compliment and it amuses him greatly.

“If I had known getting shot would bring all of my favorite people together so easily, I would have done this months ago.”

He shoots her a sideways glance at a stoplight. “Too soon, Veronica. Still too soon.”

She reaches over and rubs his arm again. “Sorry. I’ll save my ill-timed bullet humor for my dad.”

“Does he actually laugh at those?”

“No,” she says, and he can hear her trying to keep the laughter out of her own voice. “But I have his genes, so he’s stuck with me.”

“So, I have an out?” he asks, meaning to sound playful. But her hand drops away from his arm.

“Do you want an out?” Her voice is quiet, her tone changed – all traces of her laughter gone.

He thinks she might still be reeling from their argument at the fair. She retreats back to walking on eggshells when she senses the kindling of a fight. And his Veronica loves a good verbal spar. But she’s that afraid of losing him. She needs him that much right now.

“I want _you_ , Veronica. You ought to know that by now.”

“No, I know,” she says softly. “I know.”

He wishes that he wasn’t driving so he could look at her and see her body language. He wishes he was free to pull her up against his chest and hear that contented little sigh she releases at the contact.

“I don’t want an out, I was joking,” he says, trying to explain himself. “That’s what you and I do, if you’ll recall. We banter.”

He can see her nodding out of his peripheral vision, but she doesn’t respond to him.

“Do _you_ want an out?” he asks.

“Of course not.”

“Then what is it?”

She sighs, her gaze focused out the passenger side window. “My insecurities just got the better of me for a second. It’s nothing, I’m fine.”

He comes to a stop at another red light and turns to look at her. “Insecurities about what?”

She turns to meet his gaze as the traffic light changes and he has to refocus on the road. “Us.”

“Veronica –”

“I know it’s stupid, okay? Just…I don’t want to mess this up. I’ve wanted this for a while, we both have, and we’ve seen each other be with other people and –”

“It’s going to take more than an ill-humored joke to scare me away. More than us arguing about your P.I. casework even.”

She sighs again, fidgeting with the strap of her seatbelt. “The head and the heart don’t always work well together, you know? I know that you’re in this, that we’re in this together, but that fear of losing you is still there. As if I’m not afraid of enough right now.”

Logan pulls into the parking lot of the marina, driving toward the parking spaces reserved for his slip. It looks like they beat both Mac and Wallace here. Good, he needs to fix this without their input. He pulls into a spot and turns the car off, taking off his seatbelt so he can really turn to look at her.

“I’m not just going to uproot myself and walk out of your life, Veronica. You don’t do that to people you love.”

“Yeah well, tell that to my mom,” she shrugs, picking at the cuticle on her thumb. “Oh and if you see her, tell her happy birthday. Tell her to use my tuition money to buy a bottle of the good stuff today since she’s clearly not using it to pay for rehab like she was supposed to.”

Oh, now he gets it. The people she loves always leave. Her mom. Duncan. Technically Lilly. Wallace had even left for a while to go live with his dad. It’s like how everyone he loves keeps dying. His mom. Lilly. In some weird twisted way he practically refuses to admit, his dad. She’s waiting for the other shoe to drop. For him to actually want that out.

That’s not going to happen.

“Today’s her birthday?” he asks.

“Yeah,” she nods. “Not that it matters. It’s not like I know where to find her or contact her to wish her a happy one. It’s not like she’ll reach out on my birthday to return the favor. She’s just…gone. Her only child almost died and not so much as a get well soon card. Mother of the year.”

Logan reaches across the center console and places a hand on her knee. “I stay. That’s who I am. I’m the type of guy who stays.”

“Well would you look at that,” she starts offering him a small smile. “You and my dad have more in common every day.” She swipes at the corner of her eye as Wallace pulls up next to them. “Come on, let’s get this normal teenager day of fun started.”

* * *

“So, let me get this straight,” Mac starts, peering over the top of her sunglasses. “You were having trouble sleeping one night and thought, let me just buy a boat that will help things?”

Logan glances over at her before continuing to concentrate on backing the speedboat out of the slip.

“I didn’t expect it to help things, it just seemed like a good idea at 3 AM,” he answers. “Vee, can you see if the back end is straight?”

She nods, walking to the back and checking his spacing between the dock posts. “You’re good.”

“Rich people problems,” Wallace whistles. “I sure wish I had the money to fund all of my late-night good ideas.”

“What kind of expensive late-night ideas do you even have?” Veronica asks, sitting on the back bench of the boat in case Logan needs her to help him guide the boat the rest of the way out.

“Like uh – um – you know I don’t think well under pressure.”

She laughs. “No, I think it’s more that you don’t actually have any late-night ideas. You value sleep too much.”

“This doesn’t just happen,” Wallace says gesturing at himself. “And a good night’s sleep is the starting point.”

“Guess we’re screwed then, huh?” Logan says with a laugh making eye contact with Veronica.

“You’ve been sleeping better than I have,” she answers quietly before clearing her throat. She hasn’t exactly told friends about her newfound issues with sleep and doesn’t really feel like now is the right time for that. “Logan, slow it down. We’re still in the no wake zone and you’re making one.”

He reduces his speed and the wake dissipates.

Unfortunately, Mac doesn’t miss a beat. “You haven’t been sleeping? Either of you?”

“We sleep,” Veronica responds defensively. “Just maybe not as much as Sleeping Beauty over here.” She gestures toward Wallace.

“It’s not a sex thing is it?” Wallace asks. “Because if this is about to venture into that level of girl talk, I’ll just jump out here and swim back to the dock.”

“I wish it were a sex thing,” Logan mumbles, driving past the buoy that marks the end of the no wake zone, and increasing the boat’s speed again.

“You told me you were doing okay,” Mac says. “Were you lying?”

“I –” She glares at the back of Logan’s head while he drives, wishing he hadn’t made the joke that turned their conversation into this. But it’s her own fault really. For not telling her friends how bad things were. For not telling her boyfriend that she hadn’t told her friends… “Compared to last month, we _are_ doing okay.”

Logan mutters something she doesn’t hear, and she thinks it might be in regard to her panic attack at the county fair a few days ago. She silently begs him to keep that one to himself.

“Hey, look if you need to talk about something,” Wallace starts.

“I don’t,” she cuts him off. “I’m fine. Really. Now let’s get back to harassing Logan for having enough money to frivolously buy this thing.”

“It is not my fault that I was born into money,” Logan calls over his shoulder.

“Again I say, a problem I wish I had,” Wallace says, stretching his legs out in front of him and lacing his hands behind his head.

She watches the muscles in Logan’s back tense up beneath his tank top. Wallace doesn’t _know_. Yes, he’s aware of what a colossal asshole Aaron was, but in truth he doesn’t even know the half of it. She wants to go to her boyfriend and slip her arms around his waist and press herself into his back. She calms him down, she knows she does. But she also knows this is information he’s entrusted in her and her alone and she won’t go and draw attention to it.

“Aren’t you majoring in engineering, Wallace?” Mac asks. “You’ll be making bank in no time.”

“Yeah sure, after I finish school and pay back all of these loans. Until then I’m basically living off of Easy Mac and Veronica’s snickerdoodles.”

“Ah yes, the diet of athletes everywhere,” Veronica smirks. “What it lacks in protein…no that’s just about it.”

“What loans are you talking anyway?” Mac asks. “You have a basketball scholarship.”

“Yeah for freshman year. I have to keep my grades up if I want to keep that money for the remaining three years.”

“What do you think it would take to convince Hearst to start a competitive surfing team?” Logan asks.

“You looking for a scholarship now, boy with enough money to spontaneously buy a boat?” Veronica asks in return.

“Nah, just thinking about how I want my one talent to be useful the way basketball is for Wallace.”

“Surfing isn’t your only talent,” she tells him.

“Ew okay, now _that_ was definitely a sex thing,” Mac groans.

She feels the blush creep up her cheeks. “It wasn’t meant to be, but since you bring it up…”

“One more word and I’m leaving,” Wallace says, pointing a finger at her.

She and Logan both break out into laughter, and it catches in her chest a little just how in sync they are.

_Remember how many times when we were all together, I’d tell a joke, or you would, and we were the only two who would think it was funny?_

“When did you two move on from hating each other’s guts to world’s most disgustingly adorable couple, anyway?” Mac asks. “I seem to remember ending senior year with you on each other’s bad sides.”

“She came to her senses,” Logan says, turning the boat in another direction.

“Oh, is that what happened?” Veronica asks, crossing her arms over her chest.

“You’re the one who broke up with me to begin with.”

“Really, you want to do this now?”

“Did I unintentionally just start something?” Mac asks sheepishly.

“No,” she and Logan answer in perfect unison.

“Do you two practice that or?” Wallace asks, looking back and forth between them.

Veronica sighs. “What happened was…” She thinks about it. Thinks about how desperately she needed help up on that rooftop and how his phone number had been the first one to come to mind. She thinks about the sound of his panicked voice pleading with her to stay with him as she drifted off into unconsciousness. How he never left her side and still hasn’t. “I came to my senses.”

“Well would you look at that!” Logan laughs. “Ladies and gentlemen, I do believe she just conceded.”

“Is it conceding though?” she asks. “Kind of thought I was just agreeing with you.”

“Another momentous moment in history.”

“Stop.”

“This is precious. Truly,” Mac tells them.

“Don’t feed his ego,” Veronica says with an eye roll.

“How does being told we’re precious feed my ego?”

She hesitates. “I don’t know, but it does.”

“Anyway,” Wallace starts, clearly trying to move the conversation away from their banter. “Has anyone else picked a major yet or am I still solo on that one?”

“I mean I’m thinking about computer science, but what are they going to teach me I don’t already know?” Mac asks.

“So, then you get easy A’s and the most expensive piece of paper you’ll ever buy in exchange for your hard work,” Veronica says with a laugh.

“Right, right, so remind me again why I’m bothering with college in the first place?”

“Jobs want proof you got that expensive piece of paper.”

Mac hums. “Logan, will you just buy one for me?”

“Pretty sure that’s illegal,” he says, glancing over at her.

Mac sighs. “I’ll keep debating then. What about you two?”

“Not a clue,” Logan replies.

“Yeah, I’m still debating too,” Veronica says. “Hoping some electives might guide me in the right direction.”

“You’re not doing criminal justice?” Wallace asks, sounding surprised.

She glances over at Logan. “I don’t know, maybe. I was also thinking about psychology.”

“Oh, you could double major,” Wallace says. “Become like an FBI profiler or something. You’d be good at that.”

“He’s right, you’re already great at reading people. Imagine what you could do with actual training,” Mac agrees.

She’s still staring at Logan’s back, thinking about how she told him she’d want out of this line of work eventually. That she wanted to find something safe. “I don’t know you guys. Me with an actual badge? All of that power would go to my head.”

“It’s not breaking and entering if you have a warrant,” Wallace smiles, pointing at her.

She laughs, still wishing she could see Logan’s face while they talk about this. “We’ll see.”

“Have you got anything in mind, Logan?” Mac asks.

He shakes his head. “Not sure why, but it’s never really something I thought about. My interests aren’t really anything I can make a career out of. Guess I’ll see if I have any luck with my electives.”

“You’ve got time,” Wallace says. “It’s not even July yet. We’ve got plenty of weeks before we even have to start thinking about school again.”

“Speaking of school though, I must commend you both on being brave enough to pick random roommates for when you move on to campus,” Veronica tells them.

“Well I wouldn’t have to if _you_ weren’t still living at home,” Mac replies.

“Let me impress upon you just how little money I actually have,” she says.

“I know, I know, but still. If I end up living with a Madison Sinclair type, make room for me in your apartment.”

Veronica laughs. “You and Backup can share the couch.”

“So hospitable.”

“Any chance you’d give up your hotel room for a tiny shared dorm room?” Wallace asks Logan.

“That’s a hard pass for me, but I wish you luck in roommate roulette.”

“Who’s your worst case scenario, Wallace?” Veronica asks. “Will I have to invest in an inflatable mattress to host you both?”

“Oh man, I don’t even want to think about that,” he says, shaking his head. “I just know I need more guy friends so I’m hoping he’s cool.”

“Are we not manly enough for you?” Veronica asks, holding a hand to her chest. “Must I try and understand the rules of basketball again?”

“Let’s make it clear, I’m not trying to replace you, just expand my circle a little bit.”

“See, but if he gets you, he gets all of us. Ask Logan, that’s how it works. We’re a package deal.”

“It’s true, I’ve been told I’ve inherited you,” Logan says.

Veronica smiles proudly as her friends laugh and roll their eyes.

“We get it, Vee,” Wallace starts. “We’re your family.”

“And don’t you forget it.”

So, maybe she has a crappy mom who gave up on her when was 16. And maybe it still hurts that she just upped and left and never looked back. But she has her dad and she has these three. All the family she needs really. They’re a better support system than her alcoholic mother ever was.

“Do you guys want to dock for a bit and go to a beach?” Logan asks. “There looks like there’s one coming up over here.”

“I’m down,” Veronica answers him. “After all, I seem to recall that I owe you a seashell.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys! I know everyone is used to my weekly updates of this fic, but there may be a slight delay in the next chapter. I started writing a three-chapter mini fic and it's been getting all of my attention lately so I have yet to start writing chapter 12 of KO. It's coming though, don't you worry. ;)


	12. Chapter 12

Logan guides the boat into one of the slips at the wooden dock near the beach. Veronica helps him take the bumpers out and tie the boat to the dock posts. Wallace and Mac shuffle on ahead toward the sand. Veronica slips her fingers between Logan’s as they trail after her friends.

“Careful,” he warns her teasingly. “Too much PDA is what earned us this disgustingly adorable couple title in the first place.”

“I’ll take my chances,” she says, squeezing his hand.

“Speaking of college roommates, you should go ahead and tell your dad that you got some scholarship to afford campus housing and that you’re living with Mac. And instead you should just move in with me.”

She shoots him a look. “And when he comes to visit and we have to chase Mac’s actual roommate out and pass off all of her belongings as my own?”

“Come on, how often is that going to happen?”

“You’ve met my dad, right? Last I heard, you two were acquaintances.”

Logan laughs as they step off of the dock and into the sand, wandering over to the spot where Wallace and Mac have set up base.

“Why do you want to live with me anyway?” she asks.

“Just trying to keep you in my bed,” he responds with a waggle of his eyebrows.

“Of course you are,” she laughs, overexaggerating her eyeroll. “Sleep with a guy one time –”

“You weren’t complaining yesterday. Oh god yes, Logan, _there_.”

“Stop,” she says, elbowing him in the side. “We’re in public.”

“We were in public on the Ferris Wheel too and you didn’t try and stop me then.”

“Didn’t try and stop him from what?” Mac asks, looking up as they approach.

Veronica exchanges a glance with Logan.

“ _Another_ sex thing? Seriously you two, get a room,” she groans.

Veronica blushes as she lightly shoves Logan in response. He laughs, digging the beach towel out of her bag and spreading it out across the sand. She joins her friends in sitting, happily taking in the warmth of the summer sun. She listens to their chatter, more predictions about college, complaints about the heat when it’s only June, discussion of the new barbeque place that opened over by their high school. Normal teenager stuff.

But as she lets her eyes slip closed, lulled by the sound of their voices, her ears pick up on another conversation between two teenage girls sitting a couple of feet away.

“So like, does your dad have to run for mayor or does he just automatically get it now that Goodman is out?”

“Ashley, you could be a little bit more sensitive. People are _dead_.”

“Okay, but I heard that he was a child molester. Are we really sad that he’s gone?”

“But there were other innocent people on that plane. Like the pilot.”

_Like my dad almost was._

She opens her eyes and tries to subtly turn her head and look in their direction. She recognizes Shauna, the new interim mayor’s daughter, but she doesn’t think she’s ever seen her friend – Ashley was it? – before.

“Okay well yes, I feel bad for those people obviously. But I don’t want to talk about death right now, that’s too tragic. I just want to know if there’s going to be an election.”

“You’re unbelievable.”

“What?”

Veronica shakes her head, trying to tune them out. She doesn’t want to think about that plane or that night. But she finds she keeps hearing them more than Wallace’s current conversation about basketball. And the harder she tries not to think about it, the more she does.

What if her dad had been on that plane like he was supposed to be? What would she have done? Where would she have gone? Would Logan have moved into her apartment with her? Would she have moved in with him at The Grand? Would he even be willing to take care of her like that? Would news of her father’s death actually bring her mother back into her life? Would Backup be allowed to stay at The Grand?

She shakes her head again trying to chase the persistent roll of ‘what if’ scenarios out of her head. But this Ashley girl is unrelenting and now wants to hypothesize about Woody’s victims. She wants to go slap this girl, truly.

“I wonder if one of them caused this. The ultimate revenge.”

“You have got to stop watching soap operas with your grandma, you sound insane.”

“It’s the perfect plan, really. How’s anyone supposed to trace _that_ back?”

“You realize that forensic experts are real people, don’t you?”

“Ugh whatever. Do you think it was anyone we know? Omigod do you think they’re still out there? Do you think they’re still violent?”

Veronica feels her stomach roll. Is her rapist violent? Is the man who shot her and blew up Woody’s plane while he was still on it violent? Even if he’s not still out there…

“Ooo maybe they’ll make a documentary about this someday! And maybe you’ll get to be in it since your dad took over his mayoral duties.”

A documentary? About Woody? Beaver? _Her life?_ No, no, no, she does not need that. _The Aaron Echolls Story_ constantly playing in reruns is already enough to make her sick. Let alone what it must do to Logan.

“No, there’s no way anyone would watch a documentary involving me,” Shauna is telling her friend. “There are way more interesting people around Neptune.”

“Hmmm I guess you’re right. Like I heard the old sheriff’s daughter got shot. There’s a rumor going around that Aaron Echolls did it to try and teach her a lesson for accusing him of murder.”

_You know Aaron Echolls is staying here. What do you want to bet I can get him convicted for the death of this teenage girl?_

That does it. She twists around away from them and dry heaves, nearly expecting to see her breakfast again, but nothing comes but her shaky breath. She feels her whole body shake with the force of her coughing. Logan is on her instantly, rubbing her back, trying to calm her down.

He hadn’t been listening to Shauna and Ashley. How does she explain away this panic attack? And Mac and Wallace are certainly not going to let this slide.

Veronica screws her eyes shut, shaking her head.

_The old sheriff’s daughter got shot._

She rubs at her chest where the scar is, trying to regulate her breathing as she’s half aware of Logan trying to give her breathing cues. His hand rubs up and down her back slowly and she thinks he’s trying to get her to breathe in time with his movements.

_Deep slow breaths. It’s over. You’re safe_.

She meets Logan’s eyes and everything else just drops away. She focuses on him and the way he’s trying to coach her to breathe. She gets it to even out, gets her heart rate to slow. She can see the unasked question dancing in his eyes – _what happened?_ – as he pulls her up against his chest. Veronica buries her face against his tank top, letting the smell of his cologne mingled with sunscreen further soothe her. She can’t face her friends’ questioning gazes just yet. She owes them all an explanation she knows she does, but she’s not ready just quite yet.

Logan continues to rub at her back, his nose pressed against her temple. He whispers to her that she’s safe and that he’s not going to let anyone hurt her.

Fuck, she loves him. With everything she has, she loves him. She doesn’t feel like she’s deserving of his patience with her. But he’s so good with her. He’ll take care of her if she asked him to because he loves her too.

“I’m okay,” she says softly, slowly regaining her composure. “It was – I’m okay.”

She looks over his shoulder at her friends and the twin looks of concern in their eyes make her want to hide again.

“What triggered it?” Logan asks, his focus still completely on her. “I didn’t hear any loud noises.”

She gestures at the two teenagers who have now since seen her, _the old sheriff’s daughter_ , and are huddled together whispering back and forth. She can’t hear them anymore. She wishes she had never heard them to begin with.

“I overhead them talking about Woody and…about me.”

He skims his hand down her back again.

“You know, Beaver got his dying wish. Apparently, people actually think your dad shot me.”

His eyes slip closed and he grunts, pulling her back against him. “Good thing I have an alibi for Aaron’s time of death. I’m not sure I could restrain my anger long enough to sound convincing in my defense. I don’t think you’d be able to get me off of those murder charges.”

She shakes her head. “We both know who shot me. We could easily get that argument toward your motive thrown out.”

“Good thing we don’t have to,” he sighs. “You know, maybe you should consider Pre-Law as an education option.”

“I’ve thought about it.”

“You like to argue. Might actually be your calling.”

She huffs, rolling her eyes.

“Sorry, anyway, are you okay?” Logan asks.

“I am now. Thank you.”

“Veronica?” Mac asks, tentatively.

She pulls away from Logan and looks over at her friends. They both look so worried. Crap, she didn’t mean to drag them into this. Not them too.

“I uh – I have PTSD,” she starts to explain. “I’m in therapy, and Logan can usually talk me down from an episode, but I’m still struggling.”

“You were shot about a month ago,” Wallace says. “No one expects you to be okay.”

“Look, I know you don’t like talking about it, but maybe if we knew what happened that night, we could help too,” Mac tells her. “We’re your adopted family, remember? We love you too.”

Veronica looks over at Logan and he nods.

“He stole your phone,” she starts slowly making eye contact with Mac and then dropping her gaze away. “Beav – Cassidy did. He pretended to be you in trouble to get me up on that roof. Because he saw the text I sent you warning you to stay away from him, telling you that he was dangerous.”

“I never saw that text,” Mac says. “He must have deleted it. After he stole my clothes.”

“He what?” Veronica asks, panic lacing into her tone. “Mac did he –”

She can’t finish her thought out loud. It makes her stomach roll again.

_Did he rape you too?_

“Well we,” Mac starts, red coloring her cheeks. “We were gonna have sex that night. Remember, I told you it might happen earlier? When we were at our graduation ceremony? But he couldn’t –he couldn’t get it up. And I told him it was fine, that I didn’t care. But he was visibly upset with himself about it. And then I went to the bathroom and when I came back out, he was gone and so were my clothes. He must have gone to check his phone and saw your message to me instead. Veronica, I’m so sorry.”

“Hey, what? No,” Veronica says, crawling across the beach towels toward her friend. “It’s not your fault that he intercepted the message. It’s not your fault that you trusted him. I’ve known him since we were kids and I never saw this coming.”

“I just – I liked him so much, how did he turn out to be such an asshole?”

Veronica pulls her in for a hug wanting to kick herself. She’d been so wrapped up in the all of the trauma she and Logan and been dealing with, she’d forgotten to check in on her friends and how they were dealing with all of this. Especially Mac. She’d been dating the guy who had come to haunt her own nightmares. She – oh god, the chlamydia.

“Mac, did you guys ever – I mean Woody had an STD and Cassidy – um.”

Mac shakes her head. “We never got there.”

Veronica exhales a sigh of relief, sitting back on her heels. She feels Logan’s hand at her back again. Protective. Comforting.

“So, he shot you because you knew too much and he was trying to keep you quiet?” Wallace asks, gently.

She nods. “He wanted me to jump. But I managed to get a message to Logan and when he showed up, I think it spooked him. I think he shot me out of panic. If I hadn’t been able to get a hold of Logan that night, I don’t know what would have happened to me.”

Logan’s hand slides down to her hip, tugging her against his side.

Wallace shakes his head. “And I wasn’t there to help any of you because I was too busy making a fool out of myself to impress a girl who’s been lying to me all year.”

“Wallace –”

“No, I don’t need you defending her, Vee. I should have been _here_ for all of you. Not off wasting my breath on Jackie like that.”

“You being in Neptune that night wouldn’t have changed anything, Wallace,” she tries to tell him.

“Like hell, it wouldn’t have! I would have been with you! I would have gone up to the roof with you to meet who we thought was Mac that night.”

“So, what? So you could have gotten shot too? He was only expecting me, two of us would have blind-sided him. He might have taken the gun out even sooner than he did. I’m glad that you were far away in New York that night. I’m glad that you were safe. Wallace, if anything would have happened to you –”

Logan releases her side so Wallace can hug her now. This was so not the nice, peaceful beach outing she had wanted for them today. Instead, all four of them are in tears, all of them hurting from the same pain she hasn’t been able to shake for a month. She didn’t want this. She didn’t want any of this.

“Look, uh,” Logan starts. “I’ve been over that night hundreds of times in my head. I don’t think there’s anything any one of us could have done to precipitate a different outcome. He was bound and determined to shoot someone that night. The way my therapist put it, Cassidy’s own pain was getting to be more than he could handle on his own. But he never asked anyone for help he just gave into it.”

“You’re in therapy too?” Mac asks quietly.

He nods. “I made Veronica a deal. I’d go if she would. And I think it’s helped. Even if there are still nights where neither of us can sleep.”

Veronica looks around at her little huddle of friends, the way they surround her on all sides, protecting her, trying to keep her safe.

“Listen I – I’m dealing with it,” she starts. “And I appreciate all of you more than you’ll ever know. But Logan’s right, we can’t change what happened that night. We can’t let the ‘what ifs’ consume us. We face our fear, address our pain, and try to move forward and heal. Logan and I made this list of all of these quote unquote normal teenager things we wanted to do this summer. We realized that Lilly died and we stopped being normal teenagers in that instant. And we’ve been _trying_ to make up for it, but it usually ends like this.” She gestures around at all of them. “I’m just not there yet. And neither is he.”

“That’s where this super couple came from,” Mac says, nodding. “I get it now. You went through this together and you’re still leaning on and depending on each other. It’s made you closer. Senior year at war with each other aside.”

“I’d do anything for her,” Logan says softly. “I almost lost her.”

Veronica reaches over and squeezes his hand. He squeezes back in response.

“What do we do now?” Wallace asks.

“Enjoy the sun before it’s supposed to rain tomorrow?” Veronica suggests with a shrug. “I know this is a lot to deal with, believe me, but sitting around questioning every decision in regard to it is only going to make it worse.”

“We _all_ almost lost you,” Wallace says. “I don’t want you to be the Lilly Kane to my Veronica.”

She laughs at that. “Trust me, Wallace. I may have her boyfriend now, but I’m no Lilly Kane.”

Logan tugs on her hand, pulling her back between the vee of his legs. She leans back against his chest with a content sigh.

“There’s no contest,” he says. “You’d win every time.”

Mac makes a fake gagging sound and pushes herself to her feet. “We left the snacks in the boat, didn’t we? What kind of heathens are we?”

Veronica laughs as Wallace moves to join her. “I’ll come with you to get them. Something tells me, these two need a moment.”

Wallace and Mac head back toward the dock as Logan tightens his arms around her.

“You sure you’re okay?” he asks.

“As okay as I’ve been,” she shrugs. “Maybe even better now that all of my fears aren’t resting on you and you alone anymore. I should have talked to them about this a month ago, but I just wasn’t ready. It’s been easier with you. You were there, you get it.”

“A larger support system is good. Your dad and I can only do so much.”

“I know. But I kind of like it when the whole world is just you and me.”

“Yeah, you mentioned that yesterday. When we were naked.”

“Horny teenage boy,” she teases.

“Just doing my part to help you feel normal.”

She hums, skimming her fingers back and forth through the sand. Her fingers brush against something smooth and she digs out a small seashell. She takes one of Logan’s arms from around her torso and makes him hold up the palm of his hand, dropping the shell into it.

“For the one you lost,” she tells him.

Logan closes his fist around it. “For the life I saved.”


	13. Chapter 13

It’s a rainy, dreary day today. A rarity this time of year, but Logan welcomes the temporary change of pace. He welcomes the day of doing nothing he’s spending draped over his girl.

Veronica is sitting on the couch at her apartment, her feet propped up on the coffee table in front her. He’s laying across the couch with his head in her lap and his hands resting on his sternum. She keeps mindlessly playing with his fingers or running her hands through his hair, while they watch _The Day After Tomorrow_. Okay, while _she_ watches _The Day After Tomorrow._ He’s too mesmerized by the that thing she keeps doing with her hands.

“Have you ever seen snow?” she asks, her fingers dancing across his.

“Yeah, I’ve been skiing in Aspen a bunch of times. Why? Have you never seen snow?”

“I don’t get out of California much. Or even out of Neptune for that matter.”

“Well, I’m fixing that.”

“What, you’re going to kidnap me across state lines?”

“Not if you come willingly.”

“I don’t know how to ski.”

“The resort has instructors.”

“I don’t like being cold.”

“I’ll buy you a scarf.”

She falls quiet again, watching the movie intently. Her fingers skim back up through his hair, and okay yes can she just keep doing this?

“I feel like my dad would do that,” she speaks up again a little while later.

“What? Cross the United States through the next Ice Age to save you? Yeah, you know what? He probably would.”

“Which is more than I can say for my mom,” she mutters.

She’s still reeling from yesterday being her mom’s birthday. It makes him want to ask her something, but he’s almost afraid to bring it up.

“Have you ever thought about being a parent someday?”

Her hands freeze in his hair. “What?”

Logan laughs. “Relax. I’m not asking you to mother my children right now, it’s just a hypothetical. Have you ever seen yourself as a future-mom?”

She sighs and her fingers trail back down to his at his chest. “I don’t know. It’s not really something I’ve ever thought about seriously. I’m just still trying to survive living in Neptune myself. I can’t imagine being responsible for keeping a tiny human alive too.”

“I used to think about it a lot. When you’re younger and you don’t realize it’s a personal choice because you don’t actually understand where babies come from…I always told myself that I would be a better father than he was. That I would never hurt my kids. But as I got older, I started to wonder if it was genetic. He never talked about his father much and I always wondered why, but maybe deep down I knew.”

Veronica moves her hands again, brushing her thumb across his forehead, getting him to look up at her.

“You’re not your father, Logan.”

“And you’re not your mother.”

She sighs again. “My dad was the one with the full-time job, and being sheriff, for him anyway, was a 24/7 kind of job. But he’s still the one who made time for me. Never missed a soccer game or a school concert. He’s the one who made sure there was pizza at sleepovers and that I had a present to bring to birthday parties. My mom lived with us for 16 years and yet it’s getting harder and harder for me to remember her. All I can think about is her alcoholism. Her leaving. Do I even have a favorite memory of her? Do I even know how to be a good mother if I wanted to be one?”

“Look, I’m not trying to defend her in anyway, but there must be at least one good memory in there. Like my mom used to do these dramatic readings of bedtime stories. She would go all out, voices, props, different hats. Most of them were not child appropriate. At one point I’m pretty sure she was just acting out old scripts of hers, but god it used to make me laugh so hard. And I know it’s really saying something when my alcoholic parent was the good parent but…I can find the good in her sober moments.”

Veronica shakes her head. “She showed up drunk to a soccer game once. Started yelling at the ref for every single call he made. I remember another parent from the opposing team telling her to knock it off or they’d call the sheriff’s department to come escort her out. She laughed in that woman’s face. ‘You don’t know who I am, do you? I _married_ the sheriff.’ I was so embarrassed. That’s the real reason I quit soccer. Not what I told you last month about not being any good at it. I _was_ good at it. But that’s junior high Veronica for you. Too afraid about what other people think.”

He knows that he jokes about her in her soccer uniform a lot. He remembers that she was wearing it the first time he met her. He remembers seeing her in it from time to time after that. But he doesn’t think he’s ever actually seen her play. He’s never pictured her as a jock. But now he wants to see her in action, wonders if she still has the muscle memory for it after years of not playing.

“Do you still own a soccer ball?”

She nods.

“When the rain stops and the sun comes back out, we should play.”

She raises an eyebrow at him. “You want to play soccer with me?”  
  
“Yeah, another normal thing for our to do list. You can kick my ass. If you still think you have it in you.”

Veronica laughs. “You want to make a little wager on this?”

Logan practically snorts. “God no. I’m going to lose, I’m positive.”

She keeps laughing. “Wow, can you believe I was almost a jock? Hmm what else did she ruin for me I wonder?”

“I know we used to compare our mothers’ discarded liquor bottle collections, but I had no idea it was that bad.”

“Maybe it wasn’t,” she shrugs. “When I look back, it’s like everything about her is shaded in whatever the opposite of rose-colored glasses is. I find myself wondering, was that moment real or was she drunk again? How do you separate it out for your mom? I can’t seem to remember how anymore.”

Logan thinks about it. How can he tell the moments in his own memories apart? And when it hits him, when he realizes it, the answer couldn’t be more obvious.

“She only drank when my dad was around. When he was working, off shooting a movie or whatever, she was sober. But when we moved to Neptune, he was home more, around more, and her drinking increased.”

“I hate this for us,” she huffs, her fingers now lacing through his. “Especially for you. You turned out great in spite of them, you know. You’ve got the biggest heart of anyone I know.”

“It’s my refusal to be anything like him.”

She squeezes his hands. “We’re not our parents. Do I know what kind of parents we’d be ourselves? No. But we know all about what not to do.”

“Do you ever think about the future? I mean I know you don’t know what career path to take and you’re focused on just healing and moving on right now, but – do you ever think about it?”

He watches her sink back against the couch, her gaze leaving his to glance up at the movie. The kids are burning books to stay warm in the library, one of them tries to salvage the great literary masterpieces.

“Yeah, I think about it. I think about a life outside of this small town where everybody knows everybody’s business. About the animosity of living in a huge city. Somewhere where people have never heard of Lilly Kane or care about the fact that my dad used to be the sheriff. Somewhere where I get to have a normal life. A regular 9 to 5, maybe a dog of my own, someone to share it all with.”

“I’ll be your someone.”

She looks back down at him and smiles. “You already are.”

She fills him up. That’s the only way he can think to describe it. She makes him feel all the good things he was starting to think weren’t attainable. She makes him feel loved, needed.

“All right so, there’s no way in hell I’m getting into Stanford after one year at Hearst –”

“There’s no guarantee I will either,” Veronica cuts him off.

“You already did,” Logan reminds her. “They accepted you. And I have no doubt that you’ll work your butt off next year in that very signature Veronica Mars way of yours and Stanford will have no choice but to offer you a bigger scholarship.”

“Logan –”

He holds up a finger like he’s trying to make her wait. “One second, I’m plotting.”

She crosses her arms over her chest and looks down at him expectantly.

“If we’re still together after we both finish undergrad – and I say _if_ because we’ve been dating for about two months and a lot can happen in four years. So, if we’re still together, let’s make a plan to get out of here together. Move to the other side of the country, go explore Europe like we talked about doing sophomore year, see what life is like somewhere else.”

“I can’t picture you on the East Coast,” she hums. “Where would you surf? What will you do without your California sun?”

“Well you see, there’s this neat little invention called the airplane. It allows for easy travel between coasts. And there _are_ places to surf on the East Coast.”

She smacks his shoulder. “Okay, smartass.”

“Not what you meant?” he teases.

Veronica shakes her head. “I’ve only ever known us to exist here. What happens when you transplant us somewhere else?”

“We get those normal lives we’ve been wishing for I hope. Nobody on the East Coast knows to come to you for help, so you don’t have to feel guilty about turning them down. You can just use your investigative superpowers to help me out if I ever need it.”

“Oh really? I get to stop unless you’re the one who needs help?”

“Well, you see, as your boyfriend –”

“Oh, here we go,” she starts laughing as she rolls her eyes.

“As your _boyfriend_ ,” Logan continues, over-enunciating the word. “I get special privileges.”

“Do you?” she asks, crossing her arms over her chest. “Such as? Do tell.”

“Well for starters, I get to see you naked.”

“Oh you are _so_ pushing it right now.”

“Did I lie?”

She narrows her eyes at him. “No.”

He smirks, sitting up straight as the credits start to roll on the movie. “So, are you saying you wouldn’t help me if I needed it?”

She shakes her head. “You know I’ll always help you if you need it.”

“What if we break up and I call you years from now out of the blue in trouble about something or another?”

“I think I’ll always have a soft spot for you, even if we don’t make it. But stop talking about it like we won’t. I don’t even want to _think_ about losing what we have now.”

“Fair enough. I’ll go carve ‘Logan and Veronica forever’ into a tree somewhere to make it official.”

“You’re insufferable.”

“Maybe. But you love me anyway.”

“For some reason.”

He laughs, standing up from the couch and stretching his arms up over his head to stretch out his back.

“You hungry?” he asks. “Got anything good around here to make a midday snack?”

“I’m sure we have something,” she replies, watching him move over to the kitchen.

He starts opening up cabinets in search for food. He pulls down a box of cereal.

“You have Rice Krispies, we could make Rice Krispies treats. Those are pretty easy, right?”

She hums, standing up and moving to join him in the kitchen. “But do we have marshmallows? That’s the real question.”

“How could _you_ not have marshmallows?”

“I still don’t get why you think I smell like those.”

“I think it’s your shampoo.”

“Hibiscus blossoms smell like marshmallows?”

He ignores her and keeps shuffling through her cabinets.

“Ah ha!” he exclaims, pulling out a half empty bag of marshmallows from behind multiple jars of peanut butter.

“I have no idea how long those have been in there.”

Logan shrugs, opening her fridge to find some butter. “They’re just sugar they’re probably fine.”

He dumps the marshmallows into a big mixing bowl he dug out of one of the cabinets and adds the butter before putting it into the microwave. Veronica watches him from the kitchen island which doubles as their table, amusement dancing in her eyes. Logan pulls the bag of cereal out of its box.

“How much of this do I add?” he asks.

“You’re the chef,” she shrugs, still smirking at him.

“And you’re no help.”

Her smirk blossoms into a smile. “Here’s some help: your marshmallows are erupting.”

He shoots her a confused look. “They’re what?”

He turns to look at the microwave and sees the marshmallows have ballooned up out of the bowl. “Oh shit.”

Logan stops the microwave immediately and curses when he tries to reach for the bowl and its too hot to the touch. He grabs a kitchen towel and uses it to help bring the bowl out to the kitchen island.

“They didn’t even really melt,” Veronica observes, peering into the bowl and wrinkling her nose. “And they smell kind of burnt, but not in the good campfire way.”

“I can fix this,” he declares, reaching for a wooden spoon and trying to stir the marshmallow clump into submission.

It does not comply.

“Maybe if I just go ahead and add the cereal?” he asks more to himself than to her and dumps the Rice Krispies into the bowl.

The marshmallow has now hardened to the wooden spoon and the cereal just sits on top of the mess refusing to incorporate. He keeps trying to force stir the mixture and the cereal starts escaping the bowl, flying everywhere.

“What were you saying about these being easy to make?” Veronica asks, noticeably trying not to laugh.

“It must be the marshmallows,” he mumbles. “They’re too old.”

“And did your loving girlfriend not just try and tell you that?”

Logan sighs, attempting to the lay the wooden spoon down on the tabletop in defeat, except it now appears permanently stuck to the bowl. “I’ll buy you new ones.”

She laughs, walking around to the other side of the island to take the bowl from him. She tries to salvage some of the cereal, before dumping whatever else will dislodge into the trash. She sticks the bowl in the sink and runs some water into it.

“It will unstick. It just needs to soak,” she tells him.

He huffs. “I promise I’m capable of actually feeding myself.”

Veronica laughs again, pressing herself into his back and wrapping her arms around his waist. “It was the ingredients not the chef.”

“Yeah,” he agrees. “Let’s go with that.”

She places a kiss to his shoulder and then steps away. “If you’re still craving something sweet, I can make you my snickerdoodles Wallace always raves about.”

“You make them from scratch?” he asks.

She nods, already starting to move around her kitchen and pull ingredients out.

“Where’d you get this special secret recipe?”

She pauses, her hands wrapped around the canister of sugar. “My mom. She used to bake them with me when I was little.”

Logan smiles. “See? I told you, you had a good positive memory in there somewhere.”

She places the sugar down on the counter. “She was good with me when I was little. I don’t know what changed or when the drinking started.”

“We were kids,” he reminds her. “It might have been there, we just didn’t understand.”

She turns back around and pulls down the flour. “I find myself wondering what would have happened if she stayed with her high school sweetheart, with Jake Kane. Duncan, Lilly, and I wouldn’t exist. But I wonder if she would have been happier.”

“You want me to exist in Neptune without the three of you? The Fab Four being reduced to the Fab One?”

“No, I just – if she was so unhappy, why’d she bother sticking around for the first 16 years to begin with? Guilt?”

“I don’t know, Veronica. I can’t manage to explain away any of our parents’ actions.”

She cradles the cinnamon bottle into her chest. “Is it petty of me to want to run into her again later in life just to show her how great I’ve been doing without her? How successful I am at…whatever I end up doing and how happy am? All so I can show her that I didn’t need her, that her leaving didn’t destroy me.”

Logan places a hand on her lower back. “Not petty at all. I’d do the same thing to my parents if it were an option.”

She curls into him, wrapping her arms around him with the cinnamon still in her hands.

“You get me,” she says softly. “In ways not a lot of other people would.”

He holds her close, skimming his fingers up and down her back. “I could say the same thing about you.”

“I’m sorry I pushed you away after last summer. Have I apologized for that yet? Because I should have.”

“Veronica –”

“I know I’ve said Duncan and I had to finish what we started, but we didn’t really. There was nothing to finish. I should have stayed with you and continued what _we_ started.”

“No, I deserved it. I was being reckless. I didn’t care what happened to me and I couldn’t see what it was doing to you until you ended things. It was the wake-up call I needed.”

“We lost a year of time together.”

“Well then, I guess we’re not allowed to lose anymore.”

She reaches up to kiss him before stepping out of his embrace and continuing to gather ingredients to make the cookies.

“Where’s this apology coming from?” he asks. “Why right now?”

“Because we understand each other better than Duncan or Lilly ever understood us. And thinking about that makes me wonder why I ever thought I could go back to him and have something that was real.”

“He was your first love. He made you feel safe. Something which I had been doing a pretty shitty job at last summer.”

She skims her fingers across his back as she passes him to get to the fridge to pull out the eggs and butter.

“You’re my safe place now,” she tells him. “And I love you more than I ever loved him.”

Logan pulls her back against his chest. “Let’s not worry about the ‘what if’ scenarios anymore. We can’t change the past. But we have each other now and it doesn’t sound like that’s changing anytime soon. And that’s all that should matter.”

“You’re good with words, you know that?” she asks. “Maybe you should consider an English major.”

He laughs. “I’ll try it on as an elective, first.”

She smiles, looking up at him. “Fine, but if you change your mind later in life and decide to write a book? That first one better be dedicated to me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: the Rice Krispie Treat fail? Totally happened to me last month. Thought it might be cute in a fic. :)


	14. Chapter 14

She wakes from a dream about her mother. She’d expected her subconscious to land Lianne passed out in a bar somewhere, but instead she’d been sober and happy. Sober and happy and smiling with a faceless man and children. A new family. One without her. One without her dad. She’d moved on and found a life free of whatever it was that was weighing her down in Neptune.

Veronica thinks she must have been one of those weights.

She lets her mind drift back to the what if scenarios she’s tried so hard to chase away from her thoughts. What if Cassidy managed to kill her? Would her mother bother to show up for her funeral? Would her dad even try to track her down and tell her the news in person? Would she even care?

But her thoughts don’t stay focused on her mother in the confines of her what if scenario. They instead drift to Logan as they so often do lately. What would he do if she died that night? If she hadn’t been able to get the message to him for help? They weren’t a couple when it happened. They were barely on speaking terms until the trauma shoved them back together. She knows that if she were to ask him now, he wouldn’t be able to get past his current feelings for her to answer for his past self. But he loved her first, made her think he still felt that way on alterna-prom night. Speaking terms or not, her death would not be easy on him.

Lilly. His mother. She doesn’t want to get added to that list. She doesn’t want to be someone else he cares about who dies on him, who leaves him.

What does it say about her mother that her boyfriend supposedly cares more about her than she does?

Nearly three years later and she’s still not over her leaving. It probably doesn’t help that she always changes the subject when her therapist tries to bring it up. But the harder she tries not to think about it, the more images of her tiny self, laughing and baking with her mother in the kitchen dance across her vision.

Was it not enough that she was still grieving her best friend’s death and trying to cope with everything that Cassidy had done? Could the abandonment issues take a backseat for like ten seconds maybe before her head managed to explode?

The normal teenager things list with Logan is a good distraction and the therapy is at least helping to keep the worst nightmares at bay, but none of it manages to quiet the constant dull roar of thoughts in her head. They can be all consuming at times and she doesn’t know how to turn them off.

But Logan does. He reads her as easily as a picture book. He knows when she gets all up in her head and can bring her back out, back to him. He can calm her down. She doesn’t know when along the way she gave him that power, when he figured her out so completely, but she’s glad it happened.

She loves him in a good all-consuming type of way and it settles her nerves to know he feels the same.

If only her brain knew how to find the off switch without his help.

Veronica finally pushes herself out of bed and wanders out into the kitchen to see if her dad is awake yet. He’s sitting at the table with the newspaper strewn about all over the place. A freshly brewed cup of coffee sits off to his right, the steam still rising up from it.

“Trying to catch a conman in the classified ads?” she asks, noticing he’s staring way too hard at the used cars page.

Keith shakes his head. “I’ve got a client who claims her father tries to contact her every holiday through some secret code of theirs they came up with when she was a kid by running a fake ad in the local paper. Figured it was Independence Day, might as well check for myself.”

Veronica hums, pulling a coffee mug down from the cabinet. “And did she give you the cipher or are you just supposed to guess and accidentally end up buying us an ’82 Ford Explorer that barely runs?”

He gives her a fake laugh before turning the page. “She doesn’t need me to decipher it, she’ll know it when she sees it.”

“So then what is she paying you for?”

“Besides these messages, she hasn’t heard from him in 10 years. She wants to know if he’s dead and if he just paid the newspaper out for years in advance.”

Will anyone even know to tell her when Lianne dies? Wherever she’s at in the world, do the people she’s with even know she has a daughter?

“How come you and I don’t have a secret code?” Veronica asks.

“We’re private investigators, honey, not spies.”

“Is your client a spy?”

“Not that I’m aware of, but I also doubt that’s information actual spies are forthcoming about.”

“How does one become a spy even?”

Keith looks up from the paper. “Are you looking to join the CIA?”

She shakes her head, filling up her coffee mug. “No, just pointless morning chatter.”

“Uh huh,” he says skeptically, turning another page of the paper. “What time is Logan coming to get you?”

“Who said I was hanging out with Logan today?”

“You two haven’t spent more than a day apart since – school ended.”

She hears the hesitation in his voice, like he had originally intended to end that sentence differently.

_Since you got shot._

“You think I’m spending too much time with him.”

It isn’t a question.

“That’s not what I said.”

“It was implied.”

“You’ve been spending a lot of time together,” Keith tries to clarify. “I never said it was too much. I was making an observation not a judgement.”

“He’ll be here around one,” she sighs, taking a sip from her mug. “I like spending time with my boyfriend, so sue me.”

“I was young and in love once, I get it,” he chuckles, flipping back to the first page of the classifieds. “And after everything you’ve both been through, I understand needing someone who gets it on that same personal level.”

“You remember that we were friends first, right? Two-fourths of the Fab Four. Even though losing Lilly put a hold on that for a while…”

“Oh, I remember,” Keith tells her. “The way you and Logan were always whispering, I had my doubts that Duncan was the one you were actually dating.”

She narrows her eyes at him. “What do you mean, the way we were always whispering?”

“The two of you have had inside jokes since back when you were still in soccer cleats. You don’t remember that?”

She thinks back to the conversation she and Logan had when she was still on bedrest. About how nobody else would laugh at their jokes, but they always found each other to be funny.

“No, I remember. Just surprised someone noticed is all.”

“As the loving, protective father that I am, you better believe I paid attention to every interaction you had with the opposite sex.”

Veronica rolls her eyes. “Relax, Dad.”

“So, what do you call yourselves now without Lilly and Duncan around? The Fab Two?”

She groans. “We don’t call ourselves anything.”

“I wouldn’t judge you if you did, you know.”

“Dad –” she trails off, shaking her head.

“He cares about you, doesn’t he? Less in a teenage boy sort of way, and more in a young adult sort of way.”

Her mind drifts to how often she accuses Logan of being a horny teenage boy, but she _really_ doesn’t want to get into the whole ‘safe sex’ talk with her dad right now.

“Yeah,” she nods. “I think…I think it’s more than just high school love, you know?”

Keith smiles at her. “I’m glad you’re happy, honey. You of all people deserve some happiness in your life.”

She thinks she might be blushing, thinking about how much Logan means to her. “Thanks, Dad.”

She takes a sip of her coffee and thinks about telling Logan that he finally has her father’s approval. She knows his first question will be something about ‘does this approval extend to us being roommates’ because he really is just an 18-year-old boy trying to keep her in his bed. And as much as she wants to stay in his bed and let herself get wrapped up in him for hours, she knows the answer to that roommates question is still no. But maybe someday…

* * *

He remembers the 4th of July parties his parents used to host in the past. All of his dad’s important friends huddled around him at his fancy outdoor grill, listening to him spin some tail while he tended to the burgers and steaks. His mom’s friends sitting under the pool umbrellas with her, sipping on some fancy cocktail she whipped up. While he and Duncan and Dick and – fuck – Beaver used to have cannon ball contests into the pool, trying to see who could splash Lilly and Veronica floating around on their pool rafts the most.

How weird is it that four of those people are dead now, two of them are AWOL, and he and Veronica are all that’s left? Is it weird to long for those days when they were all together if it means reintroducing the abuse from Aaron? But the thoughts of the good times, of the happy days, of the celebrations where having all of his friends around him kept him safe – he misses that. He misses his friends, his mom, the life he had once with those people.

He loves the new dynamic he has with Veronica, don’t get him wrong. He _loves her_ and doesn’t want to go back to being just friends. And he does genuinely enjoy the company of Wallace and Mac. And spending the 4th with the three of them at the beach with a good majority of the rest of Neptune wasn’t a bad way to spend the day at all. But he misses the private pool parties. Misses sneaking away with Lilly into the pool house for 30 minutes or so, only their friends aware of their momentary departure.

Oh god, now that he thinks about it was his dad’s creepy ass camera setup in there always recording? Did he and Lilly make a sex tape or two without even realizing it? Did his dad watch it? Fuck, he’s going to be sick if he keeps thinking about that.

He feels the gentle brush of Veronica’s fingertips across his shoulders before he feels her sit down next to him. She silently curls into his side, watching as Wallace gets talked into a game of sand volleyball by some other guys on the basketball team. She’s been pretty quiet all morning, letting Mac lead the conversation as she complained about the Hearst Roommate Finder website. He wonders what’s going on in that head of hers. Is she missing the old days as much he is right now?

“Penny for your thoughts?” he asks, stroking his thumb down the column of her spine.

“You can keep your penny,” she sighs.

“What’s on your mind?”

“I’m still thinking about my mom. I had a weird dream about her. I can’t seem to shake it.”

“You okay?”

She nods against his shoulder. “I think my brain got tired of obsessing about my PTSD and thought it would be fun to revisit my abandonment issues.”

Logan turns his head and places a kiss to the crown of hers. “Meanwhile, I’ve started focusing on how much I miss the 4th of July parties my parents used to throw. Me, missing a time period when Aaron was alive and mean as ever? Something’s wrong with me too.”

“I used to look forward to those parties every year. There was something about those red, white, and blue sprinkles that always made your mom’s rice krispie treats taste like the finest dessert in all the land.”

He laughs. “She had better luck with them than I did, huh?”

Veronica hums, digging her toes into the sand. “I miss the old normal too, you know. Our old friends, our old shenanigans.”

“I know I keep saying this is our fresh start, but I wish there was more of our past we got to bring with us.”

“We might be bringing along more than you realize.”

“What do you mean?”

“Something my dad told me this morning. Said he used to question if Duncan was really the one that I was dating since you and I were always whispering together.”

Logan smiles. “You’re my favorite part of my past, Veronica. I’m glad I get to keep including you in my future.”

She presses tighter into his side as she looks up to see Mac walking back toward them with the lemonades she went to buy from the boardwalk.

“That line was insane!” Mac tells them as she gets closer. “You’d think everyone here at the beach today had one member of their party standing in it. Where’d Wallace go?”

Veronica gestures toward the volleyball game. “He was recruited.”

“Typical athletes,” Mac laughs, sitting down and passing out the lemonades. “Well if his ice is all melted and the drink is lukewarm by the time he’s done, I’m not standing in line again to get him a new one.”

Logan listens to them joke about Wallace’s athletic habits. Veronica doesn’t loosen her grip on him or lean away from him the entire time. She laughs with her friend but stays rooted at his side. There’s something else going on with her, something she’s not saying. When Wallace jogs back over to quench his thirst and gets into an argument with Mac about the lemonade, he prods her again.

“You sure everything’s okay?” he asks.

“What, a girl can’t be extra clingy without something being wrong with her?”

“A normal girl? Sure. But you?”

“I need you to stop reading me so well,” she sighs.

“Tell me what’s wrong.”

She glances over at her friends, still lost in their own argument, before she tilts her head up to meet his gaze. “If I died that night, whether because I couldn’t get the message to you for help or because the doctors couldn’t save me after I was shot, would my mom come back for my funeral? And you…Logan, what would you have done? If I hadn’t gotten to my phone…if he killed me…”

He feels his heart clench in his chest. This is something he doesn’t let himself think about. He’d seen version after version of it on repeat in his nightmares those first couple of weeks. He doesn’t make it without her. The alcohol consumes him. He lets it win.

“You’re a survivor, Veronica. I don’t want to think about the what ifs in this scenario, because I don’t actually have to deal with them. You didn’t die. I didn’t lose you.”

“You guys up for a game of sand volleyball?” Wallace asks, turning to look at them. He must notice the way they’re looking at each other, see the sheen of tears in Veronica’s eyes, because he backtracks. “Whoa, hey, is everything okay?”

Veronica sniffs, wiping at the corner of her eye. “Yeah, I’m fine. I’ll play.”

Logan gently tugs on her arm as she starts to stand up. “Hey. Where is this all coming from?”

“I can’t get out of my own head lately. Therapy is forcing me to think about things I’d rather not. Things I’d much rather just push down and bury. And I get my method isn’t exactly healthy, but at least my way I’m not constantly thinking about my own mortality.”

“Have you told your therapist this?”

“No, because I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Veronica –”

“I’m trying, Logan. That’s all I’m capable of doing right now.”

She gives him a quick kiss before standing up to join Wallace and Mac. Logan pushes himself to his feet to join them as well, thinking about how she’s not coping again. He knows it’s not on him and him alone to help her through this, but he’ll be damned if he doesn’t at least keep trying.

* * *

The sun has set and they’ve settled in to prime spots for the annual Neptune Independence Day fireworks show. Logan stands behind her with his arms wrapped around her waist. Wallace and Mac are off to her left, talking once again about potential college roommate horror stories. She thinks it must be nice for that to be their biggest concern right now. It must be nice to only worry about the future instead of constantly dwelling on the past.

She feels it the second the first firework is set off. The tightening in her chest at the sound of the loud crack as the sparks glitter into the sky in the distance. She feels like her brain is scrambling for purchase, trying to convince her elevated heart rate that the noise just belongs to the firework show she can very clearly see happening before her eyes.

But each one sounds like a gunshot. Especially when she lets her eyes slip closed in an attempt to get herself to breathe which only seems to make things worse. She’s jumping at the sound of each one and she feels Logan’s arms tightening around her with each jump. She tries to turn and look at him over her shoulder, seeking his reassurance, but she realizes he has his face buried in the crook of her neck.

_No, no, fuck, not him too._

She made him think about it. Made him think about that gunshot wound being fatal to her. And now the rapid fire of the fireworks is jarring his nerves just as much as it’s jarring hers. He’d been the stronger one of the two of them throughout all of this, he’d been her rock. What was she supposed to do if he was crumbling? Especially when she was the one to push him there all because she was trying to escape her own thoughts.

His PTSD wasn’t supposed to be as bad as hers. He’s not the one who got shot.

_But he’d watched it happen._

“ _I watched the light leave your eyes. I thought you died in my arms.”_

She fights through her own panic attack, pushing it down, and trying to help him through his.

Veronica spins in his grasp, cups his face in both of her hands. “Logan, look at me.”

He slowly opens his eyes and she can see the fear swimming in them. Two more fireworks explode one right after the other in large booms that seem to shake the ground under their feet and they both flinch in tandem. She can hear her own heartbeat thundering in her ears. That’s what she needs him to feel too, her heartbeat.

She reaches for his right hand and places it over her heart, over her scar.

“Focus on my heartbeat,” she tells him. “It’s steady rhythm.”

It’s more frantic than steady at this point, but the semantics don’t really matter right now.

“I’m okay,” she continues. “You’re okay. We’re okay.”

It’s like she can see the panic receding in his eyes as he focuses in on her. His breathing becomes less erratic and it serves to center her as well.

_They’re just fireworks, that’s all they are. Nobody is shooting at you._

But then the finale starts, and the frequency of the pops increase, and she starts to feel the panic simmering back at the edges of her mind. And Logan senses this, pulling her up against his chest.

“I’ve got you,” he’s the one comforting her now. “They’re almost over.”

She hadn’t even thought about the sound of the fireworks being triggering and she’s kicking herself for not thinking of it earlier. She’d always loved fireworks, fuck this PTSD for turning them against her now.

The noise of the fireworks stops, and the sound of the chatter from the other people around them starts to bring her back to her senses. She looks up at Logan and he’s looking back at her just as dazed as she feels.

“They really outdid themselves this year,” she hears Wallace say. “That was way cooler than last year’s show. What did you guys think?”

She exchanges another glance with Logan.

“They were something else,” Logan answers, skimming a hand down her back. “Definitely felt different than last year’s.”

Wallace grins and turns back to Mac as she asks him a question. Veronica sinks back against Logan.

“What are we gonna do, L? When is this going to stop?”

“We have good days, and we have bad days,” he tells her, starting to slowly sway them back and forth as though the rocking motion is meant to calm her down. “We keep fighting for more good days.”

“I didn’t mean to bring you down with me,” she says softly.

“You didn’t, Veronica, I’ve been here. And before you try and say you shouldn’t have involved me in the first place, you’d be dead right now if you hadn’t. I’d rather this than that.”

Her hands tighten into fists at the back of his shirt. “I just want to feel okay again. And I want that feeling to last for more than a week.”

“Yeah baby, I know. Me too, I know.”

He doesn’t often call her by pet names, let alone something like ‘baby.’ But she doesn’t jokingly call him out on it this time. She lets him comfort her in their whole own little world, lets everything else melt away.

_More than high school love_.

He’s her person through and through. And she’s his.

“There has to be something else we can try,” she says. “Something else to help us.”

“We could revisit your whole theory about facing our fears,” he suggests.

“So the security guard can kick us off the roof of The Grand again?”

“No, I have something else in mind, but I don’t think you’re going to like it much.”

“What is it?”

He pulls back from her slightly to meet her gaze and nearly winces as he tells her his idea. “We could go to a shooting range.”

“Logan –”

“Look, I know how you feel about guns both previously and currently, but maybe being the one to fire the gun yourself, being the one to make the gunshot noise, maybe it will help. It’s a dumb idea but –”

“So dumb it just might work,” she cuts him off.

“Wait, you want to try it?” he asks in near disbelief.

“I feel like I’m bordering on desperation here and I’ll try anything that has even the slightest potential to help. What about you? Will this help?”

“I don’t know. But I’m in if you are. We can look into it, see what all we need to do.”

Veronica nods. “If we can’t face our ghosts and the physical location didn’t help any, maybe facing the physical object itself will help. I think you’re right. I need to re-associate the sound with what it really is. It’s not going to fix everything, but maybe it will help the jumpiness. But what if it makes things worse?”

“If we get there and either of us feels uncomfortable, we’ll leave, no questions asked. You don’t have to make a decision about it tonight, it’s an idea that just popped into my head. I’m just trying to think of another approach that might help.”

“And I love you for that,” she tells him. “I know how badly you want to help me.”

“And I know how badly you want to take away all of my pain too.”

“Will any of this ever get easier?”

“I hope so, Veronica. I really do.”


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I normally write it silence because it helps me to focus better, but when writing this chapter "peace" by Taylor Swift was stuck in my head the entire time. It's unofficially the song of this chapter. 
> 
> Our coming-of-age has come and gone  
> Suddenly this summer, it’s clear  
> I never had the courage of my convictions  
> As long as danger is near  
> And it’s just around the corner, darlin’  
> ‘Cause it lives in me  
> No, I could never give you peace
> 
> But I’m a fire and I’ll keep your brittle heart warm  
> If your cascade, ocean wave blues come  
> All these people think love’s for show  
> But I would die for you in secret  
> The devil’s in the details, but you got a friend in me  
> Would it be enough if I could never give you peace?

The hardest part about dying in her own nightmares is not the act of her dying herself, but watching Logan react to it. The way it breaks him – _shatters him_ – breaks her. She can’t handle seeing him in pain like that. It makes her want to run to him and sink into his arms and assure both of them that she’s okay. She _needs_ to be okay.

It scares her sometimes, how much they’ve come to rely and depend on each other, to _need_ each other. She’s not used to needing anyone, hasn’t for years. But he calms her down, centers her, and she finds that she does the same for him.

It often fascinates her that he cares this much given certain aspects of their history. They’ve forgiven each other time and time again for their little war post-Lilly’s death and for their second one post whatever last summer was. But she thinks about how awful they were to each other from time to time and wonders how they went from that to needing each other as desperately as they do.

She’d blame the trauma of it all, but trauma doesn’t make you love someone when there wasn’t already some type of feelings there to bring forward. It makes her want a do-over on her own past. If only she had fought Lilly harder about also liking Logan, if only she hadn’t caved so easily into her friend’s perfect fantasy about falling for her brother so they could be sisters.

Would that have kept her alive and away from Aaron? Would it have kept Meg alive if she wasn’t feuding with Veronica over Duncan on the day of the bus crash? Would she and Logan have survived this long together if they started their relationship in middle school? Would she still have been raped if she still had friends looking out for her that night?

Too many what ifs. Not enough answers.

Try as she might, she can’t change the past. All she can do is shape her future. Her future, she hopes, which still includes Logan. She’s tried to do life without him and it didn’t go well. And now she loves him on top of it all. She’s not religious in the slightest, but she prays that they’re strong enough and secure enough to make it through this time. Not to sound dramatic, but she doesn’t feel like she can survive without him.

There’s a knock on her door and she tells her dad that she’s up. Keith pops his head in, asking if she still wants him to take her and Logan to the shooting range today. She tells him, for probably the 10th time, that she’s sure about this. He nods, backing out of the room and allowing her the space to get ready.

Veronica sits up in bed, pushing a hand through her hair. It’s getting long again, reminiscent of simpler times. Logan tells her he likes it this way, teasing her it’s because there’s more of it to pull during sex. But she thinks of her short hair like it was her armor, her protection from the cruel world, her way to distance herself from the naïve teenager she once was. She thinks about cutting it again, drawing her armor back up to protect her from her own PTSD.

But she’s not that girl anymore either. Veronica 3.0 wants to keep it long. She’s neither naïve nor mad at the entire world anymore. She’s seen things – felt things – earlier versions of herself never would have imagined she would. She likes having the curtain of hair to hide behind when her fears become too much. She likes it long so Logan can mindlessly play with it when she has her head in his lap.

She likes that she doesn’t need the armor because she has friends again who will support her and stand by her through anything. She has people she loves besides her father. She has a team. And she’s grateful for them more and more every day.

Logan meets them at the shooting range about an hour later. She curls into his side while her dad checks them in, letting his familiar scent calm her on-edge nerves.

“We don’t have to do this,” Logan tells her.

“I want to,” she responds. “I want to see if it helps.”

“More nightmares last night?”

She nods against his chest and he lets his thumbs slip under the hem of her shirt to stroke her skin.

“Anything new?” he asks.

“Same old. I’m dying, you’re watching.”

“I hate that one.”

“How’d you sleep?” she asks, starting to pull away from him as her dad walks back over to join them.

“I actually did for once. I think I’ve been so exhausted, I just passed out. I don’t remember dreaming at all.”

“Wish I could say the same.”

“All right,” Keith starts, rejoining them. “They’re going to get us eye and ear protection, take us to our station, and give us a rundown of the rules of the range. Veronica, I know I keep asking, but are you sure about this? There will be other people here firing at other stations. If the noise is what sets you off –”

“I need to do this for myself,” she cuts off him. “I promise you, both of you,” she adds, looking over at Logan as well. “If I feel uncomfortable, I’ll tell you and we can leave. I’m just looking for some semblance of control right now.”

Keith nods in understanding, bringing up the rear as the range master leads them inside and gives them the rundown. After the rules have been explained and the range master leaves to assist someone else, Keith unholsters his gun and hands it to Veronica, unloaded. She stares at it in her hands, thinking about the brief moments when she had almost managed to wrestle Cassidy’s out of his hands right before he shot her. If she had managed to get it away from him, what would she have done with it? Would she have shot him instead? _Could_ she have?

“You okay?” Keith asks.

She nods, letting him show her how to load it. Logan hangs back out of the way, a spectator there for moral support. There if she needs him. She’d told him to bring that piece Dick Sr. had given him, the one he used to keep in his glove compartment and pulled on the Fitzpatricks’ for her. But he told her he’d given it back to the older Casablancas not long after that incident. He hadn’t wanted to keep it, knowing that it made her so uncomfortable. They weren’t even together then, and he still cared about her. His love for her never did manage to go away and she’s grateful.

Veronica follows her father’s instructions, stepping up to the firing line. She stares at the black and white target down the line. For a second, her perfectionist tendencies click on and she’s determined to hit the center bullseye. But she reminds herself this isn’t about skill or accuracy. All she wants to do is chase off the ghosts. To hear a loud crack and not end up a crumpled mess on the ground. If she hits the target at all, she’ll be satisfied. It’s about overcoming a fear, not hitting a mark. 

She can hear the sound of others firing at their own stations at the range. Even with the earmuffs muffling the sound, she feels her shoulders flinch at each shot. But the noise doesn’t defeat her like the shooting game at the carnival or the fireworks on the 4th. Maybe it’s because she knows where they’re coming from – a protected space where she knows no one is aiming at her. She can do this. One shot. Hit the target. Face her fear.

She lifts her father’s gun, aiming at the center of the target. She blocks everything else out – the range and its noises, her two favorite people standing behind her, the images of Cassidy pointing his gun at her on the roof. She focuses on her breathing, tells herself that a noise can’t hurt her, something her therapist suggested would be a good reminder to tell herself when she felt her anxiety taking over.

Firing this will hurt no one. She’s safe. Her people are safe. It’s just a noise.

She pulls the trigger, bracing herself for the blowback. She hears the pop of the fire, the thwack of the target as the bullet pierces the bottom corner, and she’s okay. She fires again, just missing the target this time. And again, managing to hit the outer ring of the bullseye. She doesn’t even think as she empties the rest of the round, finding a catharsis in being able to take her nervous energy out on something. To take it out on her fear itself, on her ghosts.

She can feel the familiar sting of tears pricking her eyes, not because she’s afraid or on the verge of a panic attack. But because for the first time in months, she feels like a bit of the weight has been lifted off her shoulders, she feels…free.

Veronica lowers the firearm, now empty of ammunition, and switches the safety back on before handing it to her father. He and Logan both see her tears behind her safety glasses and rush to her, flanking her sides and asking her if she’s okay.

“You guys, I’m fine,” she tells them, pulling the earmuffs down and trapping her ponytail to the back of her neck. “I – I don’t know how to explain it, but it helped.”

“But you’re crying,” Logan says gently.

“In relief,” she tells him. “Another step toward recovery.”

Keith leans over and presses the button to bring the target forward. “Honey, I think your aim needs some work.”

She laughs, looking at the mangled array of holes in the target. “I’ll be sure and take sharpshooter off my resume.”

She feels the gentle pressure of Logan’s fingertips at her back. “So, it really helped?”

“I mean, it’s not like my PTSD is magically gone and I can’t make promises another loud noise won’t give me a panic attack, but I do feel better. Less on edge than I have in a while.”

He nods, glancing back over at her target. She nudges him with her elbow.

“You should try it if you feel up to it,” she tells him.

Logan shakes his head. “I don’t think it will do anything for me. Not it like it did for you.”

“Mind if I see how rusty I’ve gotten?” Keith asks, sending the target back out to the end of the line.

“Go for it, Dad. Show that piece of paper who’s the boss,” Veronica tells him.

He shakes his head, loading around round of ammunition. “Don’t laugh when it comes back looking just as sad as yours.”

“Oh, come on, you’re a good shot. You actually have training, Sheriff.”

Keith laughs at the use of his former title, securing his pair of earmuffs. He steps up to the firing line as Logan and Veronica step back toward the bench behind them. She’s not shaken at all by the sounds of his shots. But he _has_ always been her fiercest protector. There’s no fear there. 

He calls the target back when he’s done, his shots hitting an impressively precise cluster in the center bullseye.

“You’ve still got it, old man,” Veronica tells him, patting him on the back.

“Message received, Sir,” Logan jokes.

Keith groans at the both of them, putting the safety back on his gun before slipping it back into its holster. “You two are hilarious.”

They look at each other and smirk.

“Anyone else hungry?” Keith asks. “I’ll even offer to pay.”

* * *

After lunch, Keith heads home and Logan takes Veronica down to the beach that backs their oceanside restaurant of choice. His fingers loosely twine through hers as they walk.

“Did you think about him when you were shooting?” Logan asks. “About Cassidy?”

“I did when Dad first handed me the gun. Wondered if I’d managed to get the gun away from him that night, what would I have done with it? He raped me. I thought he’d killed my dad. I never had the chance to let my anger settle in that night, but if I had? If I’d gotten his gun –”

“You wouldn’t have shot him, Veronica. That’s not who you are.”

She nods, kicking at a rock that comes across her path in the sand. “I thought maybe I’d see his face on the target. But it wasn’t about revenge. It was just…trying to move on.”

“You’re not trying to scream at the ghosts anymore? Or run from them?”

She shakes her head. “I just want them to leave me alone. To leave the haunted house and stop feeling so…haunted.”

“And you feel like you took a step toward that today?”

Now she nods again. “Yeah, I do.”

“As cheesy as this may sound, watching you heal, helps me heal.”

Veronica stops walking at his side and moves to stand in front of him, placing her hands on his chest. “That’s why when my PTSD gets worse, yours does too. Yours isn’t about the action of getting shot at itself, it’s about me. You’re being haunted by the thought of losing me to this thing.”

“A couple of therapy sessions and suddenly she’s a psychology major,” he smirks.

“Logan –”

His hands come up to hold hers at his chest. “No, you’re right. You, uh, I don’t want this to come off the wrong way, but you have a habit of letting trauma consume you until you manage to solve whatever mystery you think is lying beneath it. Lilly’s murder? The bus crash? But with you being at the center of this one, and there not actually being any mystery to solve with it, I’ve been worried it would consume you in a way you wouldn’t be able to crawl back out of. I know how strong you can be, Veronica. But there are plenty of strong people who go through something like this and don’t make it out on the other side. And with you being so jumpy and barely sleeping, I worry about you. But if you’re starting to find your peace with all of this, I can too.”

“Why didn’t you say anything about this before? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t realize it myself until it came up in therapy last week.”

She drops her gaze to the ground. “I knew I was dragging you down with me.”

“Hey no,” he starts, tilting her chin back up to look at him. “We’re in this together, you and me. I’m not going to let either of us drown.”

She sinks forward against his chest, her arms wrapping around his waist. He loves the way she craves his touch so much, loves that he can help comfort her and add on to her sense of peace and security.

“It was freeing,” she says, twisting her head so her words don’t get muffled in his shirt. “Freeing to just let go and fire at nothing and hear that noise over and over and not be terrified by it. You know, I was thinking this morning about how I’m trying so hard to find my old self again and to be her. But I realized, I don’t want to. Certainly not yellow cotton, pink-loving, naïve Veronica. And definitely not I don’t need anybody, I’m a lone wolf Veronica. I want to be _this_ version of myself. I mean without the PTSD, but that’s a work in progress. I want to be who I am, when I’m with you. Because that’s just as freeing.”

She takes his breath away sometimes; doesn’t even realize she’s doing it. But she’s come to love him so completely. A long way since their first attempt at a relationship when he told her he loved her and she couldn’t say it back. Now he feels it in her every touch these days. He feels it in her words even when she doesn’t speak the three simple ones which she now also offers so freely. He like this version of her too.

_His Veronica._

“Do you ever think about getting do-overs in life?” he asks.

“I was actually also just thinking about that this morning. Why?”

“Duncan and I both had crushes on you. You and Lilly both had crushes on me. How different do you think things would be? If we’d picked each other the first time?”

“That’s a whole can of worms, Logan.”

“Domino effect?”

“It could change everything.”

“Does it keep Lilly alive?”

“It might.”

“Does it stop Cassidy?”

“What am I, a crystal ball?”

He laughs, tugging on her to get her walking with him again. She unfurls herself from around him, one of her hands seeking out his again.

“All right, so hypothetical here,” Logan starts. “You and I start dating in middle school.”

“Oh, here we go.”

“Lilly decides that my father is not worth her time and therefore lives. Duncan and Meg find each other much sooner in their storylines –”

“Does she still get pregnant?”

“Hmmm maybe so. But instead of dying from that bus crash, she escapes to Australia with DK before the crash even happens.”

“Makes perfect sense,” she laughs. “Continue.”

“All right so, we’re all with you at Shelly’s party and nothing bad happens to you. Of course, if we’ve been dating since middle school, I’ve already taken your virginity at this point.”

“Naturally.”

“You being you, still save Wallace from the flagpole on his first day and befriend him. Mac though hmm…is your dad still the sheriff if Lilly never dies? If he’s not a PI, would you be? Would you need her computer services for anything?”

“So, you’re telling me if we started dating in middle school, we keep Lilly alive, but I lose Mac as a friend?”

He shakes his head. “You’d find each other somehow, don’t worry about it.”

“Are you done?”

“It just seems like we’d be better off, you know?” Logan shrugs. “If we’d had each other like this sooner.”

“I don’t know if past me was ready for something like this,” she tells him. “Sounds like I’d still be stuck on the yellow cotton version of myself.”

“I’d bring the red satin out in you,” he teases. “That’s what you said Lilly called it, right?”

She nods, laughing.

“And not just the red satin,” he adds. “The Bobcat too.”

She lets her nails dig into his palm. “I haven’t marked my territory in a while, we might need to do something about that.”

He brings them to an abrupt halt and turns them around. “Well then, why are we walking _away_ from my car?”

Veronica laughs, tripping in the sand, trying to keep up with him, and laughing even harder when he trips as well. She crawls toward him and into his lap, cupping his face in her hands.

“We’re a mess,” she tells him, smoothing her thumbs over the corners of his smile.

“In the best way,” he replies, turning his head to place a kiss to the inside her wrist.

“You know, we can’t change our past. But we can keep each other in our future.”

“That’s the plan. This whole ‘we’re in this together’ thing doesn’t stop as soon as you manage to start sleeping through the night all of the time again.”

“Good. Because I don’t ever want this to stop.”


	16. Chapter 16

July slips away from them. A month that had started out screaming with the worst of their twin panic attacks, fizzling down to a dull roar. The nightmares haven’t left entirely, but they’re no longer an every night occurrence. She manages to sleep through the night most nights now, and so does he. The month hadn’t been the kindest to either of them by any means, but neither had their entire summer.

But they made it here to August with the help and support of each other. She’d made it here, alive to see her 19th birthday, because Logan had answered her distress call that night on the roof. And she’d survived the aftermath of it all because of him too.

_Being deeply loved gives you strength; loving deeply gives you courage. – Lao Tzu_

That had been his inspirational voicemail quote this past week. It sort of stuck with her and she had a feeling he knew that it would. That’s her Logan – always reading her like a book.

Veronica stares back at her reflection in her bathroom mirror. She stands in her sleep shorts and bra, in the process of getting dressed, when the sight of her scar distracts her. The wound itself has healed – the puncture of the bullet, the incision of the surgical scalpel – but the skin is still raised – puckered pink flesh, a forever reminder. She traces over it with her index finger, feeling the edges of its imperfect shape.

_I lived_.

There’s a knock on her bathroom door and she starts to reach for her shirt when she hears his voice.

“Veronica? Your dad let me in.”

She opens the door to let Logan in, her eyes dancing in amusement as she feels his gaze travel over her half naked body.

“New year, new wardrobe?” he asks. “Or rather lack of one?”

She gives him a gentle shove. “I was getting dressed but I got distracted.”

“By your own beauty? I had no idea you were so vain.”

“No,” she groans. “By my scar.”

He steps into the bathroom behind her, meeting her eyes in the reflection of the mirror before also looking down to stare at her scar. Logan reaches up to trace it like she’d been doing a few minutes ago.

“It’s healing nicely,” he says softly.

“Wish it would heal to the point of invisibility.”

He traces around it again. “Yeah, I’ve had that wish about my own too.”

“Does it ever get easier? Looking at them?”

“Most of mine are on my back,” he reminds her. “Not a good angle to catch glimpses of.”

Logan presses his lips to her temple. “Happy Birthday, by the way.”

“Thank you,” she says, leaning back against his chest. “And thanks again for saving my life so I could see this birthday.”

“Dr. Burke saved your life,” he tells like he always does when she tries to give him credit for the save.

“Group effort?” she counters.

He laughs before kissing her temple again and looking back at their reflections in the mirror.

“And look at that,” he starts. “The bags under our eyes have finally started to recede. The wonders of sleep.”

“You were still in my dream last night.”

“What was I doing? Not dying or watching you die, I hope.”

“We were swimming in the pool at the Kane house. Lilly and Duncan weren’t there. It was just the two of us. That’s kind of weird, right?”

“Us spending alone time together is weird?”

“It is when the setting is the Kane house minus the Kanes.”

“Not really. They used to leave us alone together a lot, if you think about it. Duncan running off to help his parents with something, Lilly sneaking off to call whoever else she was having a fling with.”

“So, you’re telling me it was a memory and not a dream?”

“Maybe. What else do you remember? Just us swimming?”

“Yeah. It’s not like it pulled me from sleep or anything. Just sitting at the edge of my vision as I woke up. You, me, and their infinity pool.”

“Maybe your subconscious was trying to tell you we’re infinite.”

Veronica makes a fake gagging sound, stepping out from the circle of his arms to pull on her shirt.

“What?” Logan asks, pretending to be offended. “You don’t like my dream analysis?”

She continues to finish getting dressed in front of him, not missing the way his eyes fall to her bare ass when she takes off her pajama shorts. “That seems like another lifetime ago. The Fab Four all together? Us dating Lilly and Duncan and not each other?”

“I can’t believe life tried to take another one of you away from me.”

“I’m tough,” she reminds him, now dressed and digging through the drawer to the left of the sink for her hairbrush. “Life’s not taking me anywhere away from you yet.”

“Yet?” he asks, raising his eyebrows in question.

“You know what I mean.” She runs the brush through her hair, thinking again about how long it’s gotten. “Do you think my hair’s getting too long?”

Logan steps toward her again and lifts her hair away from the nape of her neck like he’s examining it. He allows it to slip through his fingers and back down against her back.

“I like it long,” he tells her.

“Not too reminiscent of the Fab Four days?”

He shakes his head. “It’s still shorter than that.”

She spins around to face him head on for the first time since he walked in. “Do you ever miss that version of me? Who I was before…all the trauma?”

He steps over to her, bracketing her waist with his arms. “She hasn’t gone anywhere, Veronica. You’re still her.”

“19-year-old me has seen some shit. 15-year-old me…so innocent.”

His thumbs slip under the hem of her shirt to brush against her skin. “You’ve been my friend for nearly eight years. Within the past two years is when I fell in love with you. You don’t need to be who you used to be.”

“So, you prefer me to be traumatized?”

“Stop putting words in my mouth.”

Veronica smirks up at him.

“You know I would take away all of that pain if I could,” Logan keeps talking. “And not because I miss some previous past version of yourself, but just because I hate what you’ve had to suffer through.”

She lets her hands slide up under the back of his shirt, her fingers seeking out the scars she’s already come to memorize. “Do you think the universe is done trying to break us yet?”

“Between the two of us, it _has_ to have run out of ideas by now.”

“Do you ever worry that our brokenness is what keeps us together?” she asks softly.

“No,” he answers her without hesitation. “Not with the way you make me feel whole.”

She looks up at him. “I do?”

He slides one of his hands out from under her shirt and moves it up to brush his thumb across her cheek. “I’ve never had stability in my life, you know that. But the way that I’ve had you this summer…” He leans forward and presses his forehead against hers. “I may live in a hotel now, but for the first time in a really long time I feel like I have a home. It feels cheesy as hell to admit, but you’re my home, Veronica.”

She stretches up and closes the distance between them, pressing her lips against his. His kiss is soft and gentle, but not at all chaste. In fact, a few more minutes of this and he’ll have her back pressed up against the bathroom door and her legs wrapped around his waist, with her hips seeking friction. And that’s not going to happen with her father in the next room over. She sighs as she pulls away from him, her lips still lingering against his, peppering kisses down his jawline.

“Is home a promotion from girlfriend?” she asks, her lips against his neck.

Logan laughs, guiding her mouth back to his so he can kiss her again. She would happily spend the entire day doing this, doing nothing but kissing him – it _is_ her birthday after all – but she knows her dad and Wallace and Mac are also planning to help her celebrate.

“Whatever I said I wanted for my birthday, I take it back,” Veronica sighs as he starts kissing his way down her neck. “All I want is for you to keep doing _that_.”

She feels him laugh against her skin, nipping at her favorite spot that always does things to her insides, before pulling away to look at her.

“I suppose I should just take your present back then?”

She perks up at that. “Present?”

He smirks and leads her back out into her bedroom, gesturing toward the gift bag he must have placed on her bed when he came in. She glances over at him as though to ask if she should open it now and he nods in response. She grins, digging into the tissue paper and pulling out a red velvet jewelry box. She meets his eyes again with another questioning look. He lifts an eyebrow in response and she looks back down at the box, tentatively raising the lid. A gold chain bracelet sits nestled inside, a gold open heart in the center of the chain. It looks just like the one he won her at an arcade when they were 13, only a lot more expensive.

“Logan –”

“I told you it wouldn’t be Tiffany’s. Those come in little blue boxes, not red ones.”

She traces over the heart with her index finger. “It’s beautiful.”

“Figured it had a couple of meanings even. I promised you an upgrade that wouldn’t turn your wrist green. There’s that whole romance angle with the heart and us being so hopelessly in love.” He wiggles his eyebrows as he says it, causing her to stifle a laugh and roll her eyes. “And then well –”

“I survived a bullet to the heart?” she finishes for him.

“Yeah,” he exhales. “Too on the nose?”

She shakes her head and lifts it out of the box, passing it to him so he can help her put it on. He closes the clasp against the inside of her wrist, his fingers lingering against her skin.

“So, if 13-year-old you thought the 25-cent bracelet was an offering of an engagement, what does 19-year-old you think of the fancier version?” Logan asks.

“A renewed promise on the engagement?” Veronica shrugs.

“Would you prefer I just buy you that ring already?”

“And who said I was the marrying type?” she challenges.

“You’ll marry me,” he tells her.

“One summer together and you’re that confident it’s going to happen?”

“I’m an optimist.”

She smirks at him, twisting the bracelet around her wrist. “Let’s get through college first, huh?”

“That’s not a no,” he points out.

Another eye roll as she tugs on his arm. “Come on, I’m thinking I earned the right to have cake for breakfast today.”

* * *

Their first day on campus at Hearst and there’s a large crowd of students gathered around a makeshift stage on the quad. They’d been headed to help Mac and Wallace unpack in their respective new dorm rooms, but Logan can feel his girlfriend’s curiosity pulling them in the opposite direction toward the crowd. Always looking to investigate, this one.

They get closer and he realizes it’s a Take Back the Night rally. He feels Veronica press into his side as she realizes it too. He leaves it up to her whether she wants to stay and listen or continue on their original mission to stake out their friends’ new living arrangements. She keeps them off to the side of the crowd, close enough to listen, but far enough away to not be particularly involved. 

They listen as the woman on the stage describes her attack. Veronica turns her head into his shoulder.

“Want to keep walking?” he asks her.

“I can never decide whether it’s better or worse that I don’t remember that night at Shelly’s party. I could never get up there and share my story about what happened because I don’t know what happened. My nightmares have given me plenty of ideas though.”

Logan squeezes her hand in his. They keep listening as the woman on the stage claims the fraternity houses are full of rapists and the Greek system should be disbanded.

“It never ends, does it?” Veronica asks, quietly. “More fish, bigger pond, same old shit.”

He kisses the top of her head. The woman continues on, calling upon other survivors in the crowd.

“I’m one of them,” Veronica says softly. “A survivor. I’ve never really thought of myself that way before. Not in this sense, anyway.”

“Strongest person I know.”

She shakes her head. “No, that would be you.”

“Don’t sell yourself short, V. Your strength is incredible.”

Her gaze meets his for a moment before she turns her attention back to the stage where some frat boy is causing a commotion.

“Wait, is that Dick?” she asks. “Did you know he was back?”

Logan shakes his head. “News to me.”

“Do you want to go talk to him?”

He gives a little shrug of his shoulders. “If he wants to talk, he knows where to find me.”

“Don’t let what his brother did make you lose your best friend.”

“We’ve been through this. My best friend is right here, holding my hand.”

“Your other best friend then,” she says with a smirk, looking up at him.

“Back to trying to find that new normal, huh?”

“I’ve yet to stop.”

“You’ve made great progress though. Things are definitely more normal now than they’ve felt in months.”

“You think this is normal?” she asks, gesturing at the crowd of angry woman yelling at Dick. “Okay, well that part is normal.”

“I think us sleeping through the night again is normal. I think the way we’ve both gotten less jumpy is normal. I think us starting college and talking about our future together is normal. And I think it’s all way more normal than us pretending to hate each other for two years.”

“Oh, that hate was real.”

He nudges her with his elbow. “Sure, it was.”

“You told the entire school that I had sex with an entire sports team.”

“You planted a bong in my locker.”

“You broke my headlights.”

They glare at each other and it’s Logan who breaks first, the hard lines of his mouth lifting up into a grin.

“That’s how all of the great romances start, right?” he asks.

“Only ours,” she says, shaking her head and returning his elbow nudge.

“So, you admit it? We have a great romance?”

“You might even say it’s _epic_.”

Logan pretends to cringe. “I’m never going to live that one down, am I?”

“You should make drunken confessions of love more often. Maybe write your wedding vows that way.”

“I thought you weren’t the marrying type?”

“Oh, I never said they would be _our_ wedding vows.”

“You’re hilarious.”

She sticks her tongue out at him, before reaching back for his hand and tugging him away from the crowd and back toward the dorms.

“You love me,” she tells him.

“I do.” He looks back over his shoulder at the Take Back the Night banner hanging above the stage. “And I’m grateful every day that I don’t have to visit you at the graveyard next to Lilly’s grave.”

She squeezes his hand. “God, the two of us buried next to each other? We’d haunt you for the rest of your life. Ghostbusters wouldn’t be able to get rid of us.”

“Dodged a bullet there.”

“Oh, bad choice of words, very bad.”

He squeezes her hand in apology. “Sorry, just an expression.”

She leans into his side as they walk. “For what it’s worth, Logan, I’m glad you don’t have to visit my grave either. As much I miss Lilly, I’m not ready to join her yet.”

* * *

Years later, after college and a temporary break up that rivaled the infamous Ross and Rachel, Logan finally gets Veronica to marry him. Sometimes she still wakes up in the middle of the night from nightmares of that summer. Sometimes he still panics when he wakes up and she’s not next to him, only to find out she’s just in the bathroom or down in the kitchen already. And sometimes he catches her tracing over the feint line of the scar on her chest that never managed to go away. A part of him hates the way that this one particular trauma is so permanently etched into their souls and running through their veins even as they enter their late 20s. But another part of him knows that without it, he might have lost her permanently a long time ago.

They lean on each other, get each other through. It’s something they learned how to do when they were 18, and even now, even ten years later, they’ve never stopped.

They are each other’s solid ground.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I started writing this story months ago, I had no idea where it would lead. Thank you all so much for your support as I was writing it. If you follow along on Discord, you may already know that I have several other stories I want to start telling, and I didn't want to leave this one hanging while I focused on other works. So, I decided it was time for Knockout to come to an end. Thank you again for joining me on this story, and I hope to see you on the next one. :)


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